The Wrong Sort of People
by margoleadbetter
Summary: The story of Joy and Victoria's relationship, from their first meeting until the very end. J/V obviously. Rated M mainly for language, but also occasional, mild adult stuff. This may take me a long time to complete but I'm determined to make it work.
1. The Colour Puce

**Disclaimer: I wished I owned **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**, but sadly, I don't. This chapter's title is a play on **_**The Color Purple**_** and I don't own that either.**

The year was 1976, the place, a dingy, dimly lit bar in downtown Los Angeles. The woman at the counter sipped at her drink, knowing and revelling in the fact that every eye in the room was on her. Lazily, she traced the room with her eyes, as if looking for something that might make her having come here worthwhile. The sleazy patron who'd tried to pay for her drink leered lasciviously, and she pretended not to notice, as one can when one is young and "innocent". They all knew who she was, of course. They knew her father, and her talent, her figure and his connections meant that, at twenty-five (twenty-one, if anyone was asking) she'd had numerous television roles, including her current part as the ingénue on a popular, long-running daytime soap, and the odd lifetime movie, and that her recent marriage had been splashed across the papers.

As she dragged on her cigarette, she felt a shift in the atmosphere. People weren't looking at her anymore. In a matter of seconds, she'd lost her appeal. She'd gone from being the bar's main attraction to being part of the (somewhat dilapidated) furniture. What the hell? She stubbed the cig out in a nearby ashtray and looked about her for whatever dumb bitch had stolen the attention from her. Her eyes rested on a tall, skinny girl standing near the doorway, looking drained, distressed and uncertain as to whether she dared go any further. Despite her height (which was made even more prominent by the high heels she tottered in), the copious amounts of makeup she'd applied and her clothing (or lack thereof) revealing some of the best legs she'd ever seen, in real life or onscreen, she only looked about sixteen. Maybe eighteen at a stretch. Certainly not old enough to drink in the state of California. Still, she'd probably get away with it, because these were the seventies, this was L.A., and hell, she was beautiful. Long, flowing hair and eyes you could drown in.

At long last, the girl seemed to pull herself together, squaring her shoulders and approaching defiantly. The barman raised an inquisitive eyebrow (the girl seemed not to notice the irony with which it was done) as he asked "What can I get you?" The girl relaxed visibly on finding that she wasn't about to be thrown out.

"You haven't got any Pimms, by any chance?" British. Shit. Was there anything this girl didn't have going for her? Smirking into her drink, the actress watched as the barman wordlessly poured the pink liquid into a tall glass, and laid a kindly hand on the girl's arm as she fumbled in her bag to pay. She knew exactly what she'd have to do to regain the place in the limelight that, having worked so hard to get it thus far, she felt she was owed.

"Don't worry about it, honey. This one's on me." The girl stared at her, wide-eyed.

"What?"

"Your drink," she indicated the Pimms, "let me pay. Don't take this the wrong way, but you really look like you need it."

"Oh. Erm. Thank you." She could tell that the girl didn't know quite what to make of her offer, so she flashed her her best oven cleaner commercial smile in an attempt to reassure her, flipping her hand nonchalantly and declaring that it was nothing. The girl nodded, uncertainly, before picking up her drink, gulping down a mouthful and shuddering drastically.

"Christ, it can't be that bad. Why did you order it if you don't like it?" The actress fought to conceal her grin. This kid was too much.

"Oh, I don't bloody know," the girl slumped as much was possible on her bar stool, "It's all Mum ever has in the house." Smiling ruefully, she seemed to look directly into the eyes of her benefactor for the first time, having been too shell-shocked to focus her gaze before. Her own eyes narrowed slightly, in recognition, and one could almost read the thoughts flashing across her mind, especially when one was used to having this effect on people.

"Do I know you from somewhere?" she hazarded eventually, eyebrows almost knitted in concentration. The actress tossed her head, extending her hand to be shaken, shooting the words, "I don't doubt it. Victoria Chase, star of stage and screen. Well, mostly screen. You've probably seen me on TV," at her. The girl seemed a tad taken aback by this avalanche of information, but she took the hand nonetheless, quipping "Rej- Joy. Joy Scroggs. You probably haven't seen me on TV." Victoria smiled in spite of herself. A sense of humour and everything. She knew she shouldn't allow herself to get attached to this girl, but she also knew that she was going to do it anyway. Growing up in the sixties, she'd taken to applying the phrase "What the hell?" to any situation that arose in which she wanted to do something that she knew was a bad idea. It made the idea of not doing it seem blasé, pathetic and entirely ridiculous, and so then she had no choice but to do it, which, of course, was what she'd wanted in the first place. And so, here, she applied her phrase thus. What the hell? She asked herself, and rested her head on her hand.

"So, Joy Scroggs, what brings you to L.A.?" The girl rolled her eyes.

"Something called an aeroplane brings me here. Have you heard of them?" Victoria rolled her eyes right back. She was damned if she was going to let this child out-drama-queen her.

"Oh, please. You know what I mean." Joy let out a heavy sigh, and closed her eyes, as if giving up.

"Fine. If you must know, I've just had a baby and had to give it up, my mother hates me and I had to run as far away from home as I could before I ended up killing her or myself." Victoria blanched. That was a little heavier than she'd been expecting.

"Fuck," she spluttered, "You don't mince words, do you?" The girl simply took another swig from her drink, wincing again at the taste.

"How old are you, anyway?" Victoria wondered. Joy bristled uncomfortably, obviously not wanting to be caught out. Eyes fixed on her drink, and incredibly unconvincingly, she muttered "Twenty-one?" It sounded more like a question than a statement: is there any possibility that you'd believe I was twenty-one? Victoria snorted.

"Sweetheart, who do you think you're kidding?" Joy coloured angrily, and, for a few seconds, looked as if she might be about to push the older woman off her stool, but then, she seemed to see the sense in Victoria's words. Glancing at the bartender, she leaned towards Victoria, whispering "I'm fifteen." Fifteen. Holy crap, Batman, she was fucking fifteen. Even younger than she'd thought, and utterly adorable. She really should just put this kid on the first flight back to Heathrow. But still, she didn't. She just held her gaze, took her arm and told her "Come on. Let's blow this joint." Joy didn't say anything, but she didn't argue with her either. Victoria shoved her credit card in the bartender's general direction, still not taking her eyes off Joy. The room around her, from the crumbling light fittings to the puce of the barstools, seemed to blur into nothingness, and her show's title finally began to make sense to her. All there was was the two of them, caught in this moment, on the edge of tomorrow; of a beginning. And in that moment, her mind was made up. That was what it would be. A beginning. This was going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. She'd make damned sure of it.


	2. Vickie on My Mind

**Disclaimer: I wish I owned **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**, but sadly, I don't. This chapter's title is a play on **_**Annie on My Mind**_** and I don't own that either.**

A few months later, Joy lay in her bed, in the room across the hall from Victoria's, replaying everything that had happened since she'd got here in her head. She couldn't help grinning as she remembered how they'd decided where she'd be living.

"_Where are we going?" Joy panted, stumbling after Victoria, almost falling out of her stilettos in the process. She couldn't for the life of her understand how the actress managed to move so smoothly in her own ludicrous footwear. Actually, the fact that she could move at all in her skin-tight jeans was inexplicable to Joy, but there was no time to worry about that now. She was too busy trying keep up with her. The actress answered her question with one of her own: "Where are you staying?"_

"_The Bailey Hotel." The older woman clicked her tongue in disapproval._

"_Nonsense. I'm not letting you set foot in that shithole. You're staying with me."_

"_What?"_

"_You can stay with me." Joy blinked. She wanted to ask again, because she still couldn't quite believe that that had really been what she'd said._

"_Why would you do that for me?" Victoria threw her hands in the air, dramatically._

"_I don't know, just call me a philanthropist!" Joy wasn't completely certain that what Victoria was proposing was what philanthropists really did, but she didn't want to do anything that might encourage her to change her mind, so she just went along with it._

Now that she'd got to know her better, Joy knew that this was typical of Victoria's personality: showy and egotistical, with an undercurrent of kindness and concern. She rolled over in the bed, still at battle with the insomnia that had inflicted itself upon her life for the past God-knew-how-long. Still, if she had to be awake, this was probably the best place in the world to be awake in. She never would have guessed that she'd end up being so happy not to even get the chance to see her hotel. It had turned out that Victoria lived in an apartment which her husband owned, but was rarely in, as his job meant that he had to travel frequently. At the moment, he was in Australia. When Joy had asked exactly what it was that he did for a living, Victoria had made one of her sweeping gestures and said that she wasn't sure, but she knew that it had to be something very boring, because every time he'd tried to explain it to her, she'd stopped listening long before he'd been able to finish. Of course, it would be better, Joy thought now, if he didn't exist at all, but you couldn't have everything. At least his work would keep him a long way away for a while.

She looked at the clock on her bedside table. One in the morning, and on a school night. The Visa that Victoria had managed to get her (Heaven knew how, but famous people, Joy was beginning to realise, lived in a very different world from the one she knew and hated) stipulated that she had to work her way through high school if she wanted to remain in the country, and oh, she did. As she thought this, she came close to letting her mind wander idly into memories of home. Not home. This was her home now. Victoria had promised. She filled her head with thoughts of that day, and endeavoured to forget that she'd ever lived anywhere but here.

"_So, Joy Scroggs, how are you liking L.A.?" Joy shrugged, wondering if it'd been wishful thinking or if she'd really heard a note of hope in Victoria's voice. Since she'd arrived, their friendship had bloomed, and the two of them seemed to become closer with each second that passed. Their personalities slotted together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle._

"_It's alright."_

"_Don't you miss anyone back home?"_

"_No. Well, not apart from…" Victoria seemed to hear the unspoken words as loudly as if she'd shouted them. _Not apart from the baby.

"_What about the father?" was the next, delicately asked question. Joy scowled._

"_Bastard." _

"_Ah." She inclined her head, as if that were all too easy for her to imagine._

"_But did you love him?" Joy considered this for a few moments, before replying: "I don't know. He was good-looking, and popular, and everyone said we'd be good together, so I just sort of…went for it. And I think I wanted to think it was love, so I told myself it was, but…" she broke off, realising that she was approaching dangerous territory, and might be about to reveal more about herself than would be wise. But she couldn't help herself around Victoria. She simply had to be honest with her. Looking up, she saw that the actress was looking at her very intently, and she thought she saw something different in her eyes. Something more than just curiosity, and something that was making her very aware of how exactly much of an awkward, ungainly adolescent she was, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what._

"_Well, I'm glad, anyhow. Because if things had happened any differently, I might never have met you. This might not be your new home. But they didn't, and I did, and it is, and…" seeming lost for the right words, Victoria smiled a small smile, which Joy returned, and put her hand on the girl's. A few seconds passed as they watched each other, neither one quite sure of where they were supposed to go from here. Joy's heart fluttered under Victoria's gaze, until the older woman looked away, seeming to regain control of herself, and got up, muttering something about needing a drink. And like that, the moment had passed. If Joy had been older, or wiser, she might have pulled her back and kissed her, but she wasn't, she was fifteen and stupid and she didn't know what to do with herself, and so she watched her go, wishing there was something she could do to be back where she'd just been._

Somewhere in the midst of her reverie, Joy slipped gently past the line between the waking world and near oblivion. The demons of the past were back to haunt her subconscious before the hour was up, though she fought to keep it with Victoria, wondering idly if the actress could be dreaming of her too.


	3. The Body Outside the Library

**Disclaimer: I wish I owned**_** Hot in Cleveland**_**, but, sadly, I don't. This chapter's title is a play on**_** The Body in the Library **_**(I'm thinking of the ITV adaptation, which I urge you to watch. Actually, I insist. GO WATCH IT) and I don't own that either.**

_She sat bolt upright in bed, too gripped by fear even to whisper her husband's name. Tentatively, she pulled the covers back, only to find his side of the bed empty. Something very wrong was happening, she knew it, and she knew she had to stop it, and she knew she wouldn't be able to. Her breath caught in her chest as she got up and tripped over to the mirror, becoming even more unsettled, if that were possible, by the pallid face of her reflection. Thunder rolled outside. She shivered. It was the middle of the night, and she could barely make out her surroundings, but she was too frightened to switch on the light. God knew what she might see. The clock ticked incessantly. There wasn't enough time._

_Lightning struck, and the mirror cracked, and her reflection winced as it did, vicious cuts appearing along the lines of the crevices, on her neck, across her chest, on the back of her hand. She was horrified to discover that it was not only the reflection that was injured, lifting her own hand in front of her face to see the blood oozing softly from the cut. She stared at the face that imitated her own, and watched as, slowly but surely, its mouth twisted into a sneer. Dear life, she was losing it, and the clock ticked on, and she knew that she was going to die, and she knew that it was inevitable, and she knew that there was nothing she could do about it, no matter how hard she tried._

_She picked up the silver hand mirror on the dressing table, hoping to find a more accurate likeness. What she saw instead was a very cool, very calm, very still reflection of herself. The only problem was that it was also very dead. Shuddering violently, she dropped the mirror, and the glass shattered across the flagged floor as she retched, but she was past caring. The way things were going, she wouldn't have seven years in which to be plagued by bad luck. The signs were clear. She was a dead woman walking._

_She stumbled over to the window, wrestling with the shutter in her attempt to get it open. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. When she finally succeeded, she balked at the thirty foot drop. She'd have to get over her fear. She had no choice but to risk it. Time would run out long before she'd made her way down all those stairs. The clock grew louder, its ticks growing ever more intense, until they became nothing more than an extremely painful rushing in her ears. As she stepped onto the ledge, lightning flashed again, illuminating the courtyard below, and, through the blur of the rain, she saw her. Her sister. But her sister was dead; she'd been dead for years. And yet, there she was, leaning against one of the headstones, whiter than her tattered nightdress, with barely enough skin to stretch over her bones, eyes tinged with purple, the noose marks clearly visible on her neck. As she stood there, watching, waiting, she wrenched her lips apart, rasping "You're one of us now." _

"_No. No!" she screamed, and the dead girl laughed, and she went to jump, and a bullet, a bullet that was meant for her, was fired, but she wasn't hurt, she wasn't dying. She was…falling. Falling in the direction she had intended to jump. She landed face down in the mud, and a body landed on top of her. The body of the person who'd taken her bullet. Trying to ignore the blood pouring from the wound, she dragged herself upright and struggled to turn the body over and into the recovery position. As she did, she saw that it was Joy, and she saw that it was too late. Time was up. The beautiful body was nothing more than that now. Joy lay dead in her arms._

_Her sister's ghost hissed "He'll get you in the end!" _He? He who?_ She stared up at the window through which she'd just fallen, seeing the masked silhouette of the person that'd caused all this. Joy had died for her, and it was all his fault, and her fault, for being too slow, for letting it happen. Because of him, because of her, Joy was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do for her now. He'd taken her, because she'd let her go. Time ticked on, but it didn't matter anymore. Nothing that happened now could matter in any way. She was too late. She was dead. Joy was dead._

Victoria woke up sobbing Joy's name.


	4. The Hour

**Disclaimer: Still wish I owned **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**, still don't. This chapter's title is a play on **_**The Hours**_** and I don't own that either.**

The clock struck the hour. Victoria pressed the photo of her sister on her nightstand down, so that she could only see the back of the frame, and flew from her bed, through her room and across the hall. She pushed Joy's door open and moved to her bedside as swiftly as she could without making any noise. The girl thrashed in her bed, as if entrapped by her own nightmare. It would be enough to make anyone cry, she told herself, feeling another lump welling in her throat, it didn't mean anything. She pulled Joy's tangled hair from her sweaty brow, brushing her forehead with her lips, compassionately. As she did, Joy shuddered into consciousness, eyes snapping open. She breathed "Victoria," before descending into sobs. Her friend shifted to lie beside her, pulling her into her arms. Joy gripped her twice as tightly as she wept. She'd never have known it was possible to cry so hard. After a few minutes, Joy began to calm down, and her tears began to subside.

"What is it?" Victoria rubbed her back, tenderly. The empathy she was congratulated on maintaining in TV was a damn sight more genuine than she would ever have dreamed of letting on in public.

"Bad dream," the girl choked, and the actress murmured "Me, too."

"What was yours about?" Victoria bit her lip and looked in the other direction. Now was definitely not the time to say "Well, as it happens, it was all about your death."

"My sister. She hanged herself when we were kids. I dreamed that she came back to haunt me," she raised her eyebrows, ironically, hoping that her attempt to evade the question wasn't too painfully obvious.

"What about you?" This time, it was Joy avoiding Victoria's gaze.

"It's complicated."

"You know you can tell me anything," the actress whispered. Joy felt her heart begin to melt.

"Promise me nothing will change if I do?"

Victoria almost laughed. It was just so ironic. As if it could…oh, shit. Sensing that she was getting in far too deep, she shook her head, and, sounding extraordinarily weary, told her "I promise." It was too late now. She'd already stepped into the quicksand.

Joy didn't move for a few seconds. Realising she was gawping in what was quite possibly the most unattractive fashion in existence at how honestly and unreservedly Victoria had given her the promise she'd asked for, she shook herself, closed her eyes, and launched into her unhappy narrative.


	5. The Children's Hour

**Disclaimer: still wish I owned **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**, still don't. I also don't own **_**The Children's Hour**_**. Quotes are taken from the film version so if they don't match the play exactly, I apologise in advance for my continuity errors.**

_It was 1975's take on London, and a day like any other. Or so she'd thought. It had certainly seemed that way. Instinctively, she put a hand to her still smarting cheek. Joy was fourteen, and at that stage that occurs in every teenager's life, between thinking they know everything and realising they know nothing at all. Today had been tinged with that same, eternal greyness that pervaded her existence. But then, suddenly and without warning, everything had changed._

_She put her key in the lock, wishing it wouldn't insist upon rattling so noisily. Pushing the door open and slowly and silently as was humanly possible, she greeted the familiar, heaving feeling of trepidation as an old friend. It was a marvellous house, that was what people always said when they came to visit. Perfect, even. They had to commend her mother on its upkeep. Well, they didn't have to fucking live in it. They didn't see it for what it really was. It was very good at hiding its true characteristics when members of the outside world were around. But Joy knew what it was, knew it so much and so hard that it was a miracle she didn't spend every second of every day screaming it out loud. It was ugly, bloodthirsty, poisonous. A mausoleum of all the hopes it'd killed so effortlessly. No wonder she'd become so asphyxiated after these fourteen years in it. Spectres of the past haunted this house like the raven haunted Edgar Allen Poe. She listened out for them now, but, thank goodness, they didn't have anything to say. Yet. She made her way up the elaborate staircase, pausing to close her eyes briefly at the fourteenth step, as the one ghost she could never escape flashed through her thoughts. Funny how after all this time and all this years, that same vision plagued her every time. Funny how she still had to fight the urge to gag as she continued her ascent. Funny._

_She closed her bedroom door behind her, taking to make sure it was firmly locked, before sitting down on the bed and rummaging in her satchel. When she found what she wanted, a moment or so passed while she stared at it with an almost macabre fascination, remembering all that had happened that day._

She opened the door to her English room, expecting to be met by Mr. Davies, her aging, bumbling teacher. Instead, she encountered a pretty, young, blonde woman that she wanted to get to know immediately.

"Oh!" she blurted in surprise, to her embarrassment as a ripple of laughter passed around the classroom. The woman smiled welcomingly. She had a heavenly smile.

"Have a seat." Joy could feel herself blushing as she took her normal place at the back of the room, next to Elizabeth Spence. She called Lizzie her best friend, but that wasn't really what she was. She was just the most normal person in the insane asylum that passed for their school.

"Hello," the woman was addressing the class, uncertainly. Usually this sort of hesitation would have irritated Joy, but when she did it, it was precious.

"My name's Miss Henshaw, and I'm going to be teaching you for a while. Sadly, Mr. Davies has been taken ill, so you're stuck with me 'til he's better," she smiled again, apologetically this time. She really did have a wonderful smile. It was all Joy could do to keep from beaming back at her. _Thank you, Mr. Davies_. She couldn't believe her luck. Would she really get to have this person as her teacher for the foreseeable future? She felt a touch of guilt for rejoicing so readily in another's misfortune, but she soon forgot about that as Miss Henshaw continued to speak, listening more to the lilt of her voice than her words themselves.

"I'm told that Mr. Davies was about to assign your set text for this year. Each of you will be issued with a copy, which you will be expected to return after your exams, so if you want to annotate them, please only write in pencil." As she said this, she moved to the teacher's desk, pulling a pile of dilapidated paperbacks from one of the drawers, and handing them out.

"Thank you," Joy muttered, when she reached her, looking at the title. _The Children's Hour_. She hadn't heard of it before. She flipped it over, to read the blurb: "A fine moving play examining the tragedy which follows the slanderous rumour of a lesbian relationship between two school mistresses. The malicious story spread by a neurotic girl leads to a lawsuit, the destruction of the school, and to the death of one of the women." Sounded like a cheery little tale, that. Not.

Having taken the register and enquired as to what names the pupils preferred to be addressed by, Miss Henshaw announced that, as a class, they were going to read an excerpt of the play, in order to get a feel for the story.

"Would anyone like to volunteer to read Martha?" Nobody moved. The teacher waited a beat, then gave in.

"Alright, I'll be Martha. What about Karen? Anyone?" Again, there was no response from the class. Joy felt bad for her, but she so didn't want to do it.

"Fine, then I'll just have to choose someone."_ Please, God, not me._

"How about you, Joy?" _Shit. _It was just because her name was so easy to remember, she told herself. That was all.

"Um," she replied, intelligently, "okay." The teacher shot her another beatific smile.

"Good. Is everyone on the right page? Yes? Right then." Miss Henshaw lifted her own copy of the play from the desk in front of her page before beginning.

Joy braced herself and tried to forget that there were going to be about twenty pairs of ears listening to her.

"There's always been something wrong. Always, just as long as I can remember. But I never knew what it was until all this happened."

"Stop it, Martha! Stop this crazy talk!"

"You're afraid of hearing it, but I'm more afraid than you."

"I won't listen to you!" she began to relax; to lose herself in the story. She could feel herself connecting with the character more with every word.

"No! You've got to know. I've got to tell you. I can't keep to myself any longer. I'm guilty."

"You're guilty of nothing!"

"I've been telling myself that since the night I heard the child say it. I lie in bed night after night praying that it isn't true. But I know about it now. It's there. I don't know how, I don't know why. But I did love you. I do love you. I resented your plans to marry, maybe because I wanted you. Maybe I've wanted you all these years. I couldn't call it by name before, but maybe it's been there since I first knew you." The teacher's voice shook as she spoke the words so convincingly that Joy's classmates started to fade into nothingness and she could almost see the scene taking shape around them.

"But it's not the truth, not a word of it is true! We've never thought of each other that way."

"No, of course you didn't. But who's to say I didn't? I'd never felt that way about anybody before you. I've never loved a man. I never knew why before, maybe it's that."

"You're tired and worn out."

"It's funny. It's all mixed up. There's something in you, and you don't know anything about it because you don't know it's there. And then suddenly, one night, a little girl gets bored and tells a lie, and there, for the first time, you see it. Then you say to yourself, 'did she see it? Did she sense it?'"

"But you know it could have been any lie. She was looking for anything to-"

"But why this lie? She found the lie with the ounce of truth. Don't you see? I can't stand to have you touch me! I can't stand to have you look at me! Oh, it's all my fault. I have ruined your life and I have ruined my own. I swear I didn't know it! I didn't mean it! Oh, I feel so damn sick and dirty, I can't stand it anymore!"

_For a few moments, Joy had thought Miss Henshaw might be about to burst into tears. But then she had lowered her script onto the desk, perfectly calmly, and resumed the lesson, talking about implications and inferences and context and how things had changed in the last few decades. Now, she opened her copy of the script, and began to read, and as she read on, the tears started to roll down her cheeks as the end approached, closer and closer, until the closing line, when she tossed it aside and wept herself to sleep, still in her school uniform. Following the class, James Harper had congratulated Joy on her performance, and as the hour had gone on, she had tried to shake the ominous feeling that had gripped her and concentrate on what she was saying, but , looking through her notes, she'd seen that all she'd written had been her new teacher's name. Miss Henshaw, Miss Henshaw, Miss Henshaw._


	6. The Truth About Joy

**Disclaimer: Still wish I owned **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**, still don't. This chapter's title is a play on **_**The Truth About Jane**_** and I don't own that either.**

_When she was finally called into the office, Joy was surprised to see, not the headmistress, but her new English teacher, sitting at the desk, looking worried. Oh, no. This was going to be horrible._

"_Come in." Her words were far gentler than Joy would have expected after what she'd just done. Sighing inwardly, she moved to sit in one of the plastic chairs facing the desk._

"_What happened, Joy?"_

"_We had a difference of opinion." Her teacher looked as if she was about to laugh, but caught herself at the last moment._

"_Funnily enough, I'd gathered that. Would you mind elaborating?" If it had been the headmistress, Joy would have fixed her with a blank stare and refused to answer. But it wasn't, it was Miss Henshaw, and she couldn't bear to do anything that might encourage her not to like her, especially when they'd built up such a good rapport. As the term had worn on, her classmates and Miss Henshaw had continued to ask Joy to read Karen's part, because "you do it so well," and no one would ever volunteer to read Martha, forcing the teacher to do it, for similar reasons. It had become a running joke among them, getting so that they started to be called by the names "Karen" and "Martha" more than they were by their own. Joy loved this and she hated it. She relished the idea of being connected with her teacher in this way, her affection for her only having grown since their first encounter, but she just couldn't seem to get away from the menacing feeling that took hold of her whenever she thought of it. She'd become very good at sensing when things were about to go horribly wrong. She'd had to. But she couldn't take losing it, and so, reluctantly, she began to explain._

It was your average rainy Tuesday. Joy sat the lunch table with Lizzie, and a few others joined them. As ever, Lizzie was complaining.

"_The Children's Hour_ 's so dull," she sighed.

"Oh, God, isn't it?" James Harper nodded his agreement. Joy didn't think it could be any less dull, but she kept her opinion to herself, the way she'd learnt to at a very young age.

"I don't know why they assigned it to us. It's not as if it's a classic or anything," put in Letitia Blackburn, a horsy girl with one of those ridiculous fringes which are only about a centimetre long, that even Felicity Kendal couldn't pull off. Of course it's a classic, Joy thought, but still, she didn't say anything.

"Exactly," Lizzie nodded, "I don't see what we're supposed to get from it."

"And we're still young and – what's the word? Impressionable." Minnie Johnson's words were loaded with meaning, but God knew what that meaning was supposed to be.

"What does that have to do with it?" asked Tom Perkins, best friend of James and one of the most irritatingly pedantic people ever to walk the Earth.

"Well, honestly," Minnie tossed her curls in a way that she clearly thought made her seem knowledgeable, before lowering her voice to hiss "_lesbians_ and all that. I mean to say." No one said anything to that, but a ripple of agreement seemed to pass around the table. Joy couldn't stand it any longer.

"_What_ do you mean to say?" she asked, coolly. Everyone stared at her, hearing the passive aggression in her tone. They'd never known her to be remotely confrontational before, or remotely interested in anything that drips like Minnie had to say. Minnie's eyes were just as wide as anyone else's as she stuttered "Well…I mean…"

"In case you hadn't noticed, 'Well, I mean' is not an argument. It's not even a sentence, and the same goes for 'I mean to say'." _What_ do you mean?" Now she'd started, she couldn't stop. Minnie spluttered. This was clearly a lot more than she'd bargained for.

"Well…that sort of thing…it could influence us." Joy raised her eyebrows, mock-inquisitively.

"What could influence us?"

"You know…women…doing that…it's not right."

"Women doing what isn't right?" She paused, but not for long enough to give her a chance to reply.

"Women setting up a school for kids that need to be educated? Women being wrongly accused and fighting to stop their names being dragged through the mud so they can keep that school going? Women being there for each other through all that? Women giving up their hopes and dreams and lives for the greater good? Does all of that shit offend your moral code? Because if you'd been paying any attention at all to the play, Minnie, you'd have noticed that Martha and Karen are not having a lesbian relationship. They're best friends, living their lives, doing what they can for this fucked-up world. What's wrong in the play is that a venomous child spreading a malicious rumour to get out of going back to school is cause enough for them to be completely screwed over by everyone and everything. What's wrong is that everyone believes her over two honest, hard-working adults. What's wrong is other people's archaic attitudes ruining innocent lives. What's wrong is that Martha dies because she loves Karen, and Karen doesn't even understand it well enough to believe her when she says so. What's bloody wrong, Minnie, is that it's 1975, and you're still sitting here talking shit about a play that's worth a thousand times more than anything you'll ever hope to create without even understanding anything about it, and even if they were a gay couple, it'd still be you, the one sitting here condemning them for being in love, that was fucking wrong."

There was a brief interval while everyone caught their breath. Eventually, Minnie shook her head, as if dazed.

"God, I was only joking." Her attempt to laugh it off went down like a lead balloon, so she tried a nastier tack instead: "I didn't realise you cared so much, Joy. Are you trying to tell us you're a dyke or something?" That was it. She was going to kill her.

_Joy faltered when she got to that part, embarrassed. There was a pause while Miss Henshaw seemed to digest everything that Joy had told her. Then, she nodded._

"_I see. And was it just Minnie that was getting to you, or was there something else as well? Something wrong at home, perhaps?" Oh shit. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Oh shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. She stared hard at her shoes. She crossed her arms and uncrossed them again. She was an awful liar, and she hated lies too, but lie she must._

"_No." Did she sound like she was telling the truth? Her teacher reached for her arm, and Joy flinched at the unexpected contact. She mistook it for an attempt to shake her off, and looked away._

"_You can tell me, you know, Joy." But she couldn't, of course she couldn't._

"_There's nothing to tell." She wished her voice wouldn't shake like that. Wordlessly, Miss Henshaw picked up one of the papers that lay on the desk and pushed it towards her. On closer inspection, Joy saw that it was an assignment she'd handed in recently. When she realised which one, her heart rate quickened and she couldn't breathe and she felt sick. She wanted to laugh and she was going to cry and now she _was_ crying and she couldn't even be bothered to hold back the tears. There was no point. She knew. She fucking knew it was the truth._ _More than anything, she wanted to talk to Miss Henshaw. Feeling her teacher's arms closing around her, she wanted to tell her everything. But she couldn't do that. She'd never told anyone and she never would. She never could, even if she'd already guessed. No one had ever known the truth about Joy. She'd always thought she'd been the only one who could comprehend it, the only one that knew what she went through every god damned day, but now, everything was changing, she was beginning to wonder if she even knew the half of it, if this teacher that she'd known for such a short space of time understood it better than her. She didn't know who she was or how she felt or what she wanted. The truth about Joy was that no one knew the truth about Joy, not even Joy herself._


	7. Curious Scotch

**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**. This chapter's title is a play on **_**Curious Wine**_** and I don't own that either.**

_Joy sat slumped on the stairs, shaking harder than the trees outside in the merciless wind. Those ghosts of the past were back in full force, whipping around her, their whispers roaring in her ears. The fourteenth step dug into her shoulder, and she closed her eyes, searching for some sort of release, but all she could see was what she'd seen all those years ago, and almost every day since. The doorbell rang. She got up, unsteadily, and stumbled over to answer it. It was the maid's job, but she might as well do it, since she was there. She pulled the latch back and the door open, and was met by the last person she would ever have expected and the only person she would ever have wanted. Miss Henshaw started when she saw her. She hadn't bothered to check the damage in the mirror. She'd known it'd be pretty grim. There was a brief pause, before her teacher grabbed her by the arm and pulled her from the house. Wordlessly, she led her over to her car, unlocked the passenger door for her and let herself into the driver's side. Joy didn't hesitate and she didn't ask what was happening or where they were going. There seemed to be an unspoken understanding between them. They drove in silence._

_Joy caught sight of her reflection in the wing mirror. She had a nasty-looking cut on her cheek and what would clearly have become a black eye by the morning. Great. She'd really enjoy going to school sporting that shit. Not. They pulled up in front of a pub that looked as if it hadn't been quite the same since it had returned from the war. Miss Henshaw stopped the car, and they went in. It was even worse inside, if that were possible. The air felt as if it had been breathed by every larcenous-looking patron ever to set foot in here about a million times over and the ceiling looked as if it just might be about to collapse on top of them, but Joy found that she simply didn't care. Miss Henshaw marched straight up to the bar, slamming her hands down in front of the pretty girl who stood on the other side, bent over a notepad, scribbling furiously. The girl jumped, almost dropping her pen, as she gasped "Hattie!" Miss Henshaw ignored this, telling her "We need two Scotches, Karen. Now, please." Obviously flustered, the girl obliged hastily, pouring out the frothy liquid with trembling hands. As she laid them on the counter, she seemed to notice Joy for the first time, blurting "Lawks a mercy, what in the name of Mary Magdalene happened to you?" The teacher picked up the glasses, fixing her with a meaningful glare._

"_That'll be all, thanks, Karen." The girl seemed to catch her meaning, and didn't say anything further, staring after Miss Henshaw, as if wanting to say something else, but unsure as to what it might be. Joy went after her, awkwardly. There was clearly more to this situation than met the eye, and she didn't like to get in the middle of it, but she didn't exactly have a choice. Miss Henshaw sat down in a booth in a far corner, fairly isolated from the rest of the pub, and knocked back a mouthful from one of the glasses, pushing the other one over to Joy as she took her place beside her. Now didn't really seem like the time to say "Actually, Miss Henshaw, I won't be old enough to drink legally for another four years," so she followed suit, dutifully. It tasted vile. If she'd been with almost anyone else, she might have said so, and likened it to drinking piss, but she was around the one person that made her too nervous to be sarcastic. Her teacher took a deep breath, and turned to her._

"_Feeling any better?" Joy nodded, wanting to say "I always feel better around you," but, again, not being able to. Miss Henshaw seemed relieved. _

"_So what is it? Alcoholism? Post-natal depression?" She shrugged, not knowing how to respond. It wasn't just a case of not wanting to get into it. She couldn't bear to think about it, let alone talk about it, to her or to anyone. Not now, not ever. As she closed her eyes and tried to shake those rogue thoughts out of her head, she felt the older woman's hand closing over her own. When she opened them again, her teacher's gaze bore into her own, as she whispered "You know you can trust me, don't you?" She nodded again, and Miss Henshaw nodded back, looking as if she were trying to gather her thoughts. If she hadn't known better, Joy might have thought she was nervous. Then, falteringly, she began._

"_The thing is…the reason I came to your house tonight was that I've had some news, and I wanted to tell you before I announced it in class." _Oh God_, Joy thought, _what now?_ Trying to hide her apprehension, she muttered a non-committal "Okay."_

"_I had a chat with the headmistress earlier. Mr. Davies is feeling a lot better, which is wonderful, of course, and he's going to be coming back to teach you again in the next few weeks, and I really am so pleased for him, but it does mean that…"_

"…_you're going to be leaving." Joy finished the sentence as she broke off. She wondered if she could read in her face that her heart was sinking further than the _Titanic_. Seeing her expression, her teacher shifted to wrap an affectionate arm around her._

"_It'll be okay. I'll always be around if you need me." Something stirred in Joy's chest as she reflected on how they had progressed since that first, fateful day. What with everything that had happened, the two had become firm friends, and she trusted her in a way she would never have dreamed of allowing herself to trust anyone else. She felt…close to her. When she was being brutally honest with herself, she thought she probably felt far closer to Miss Henshaw than one should feel to one's teacher, but she shoved these thoughts to one side, not wanting to admit that it was true. She turned her head to admire that striking profile that she'd come to know so well, and eventually, Miss Henshaw turned too, and Joy felt her heart flip in her chest and in that instant, she could almost feel their relationship transcending that of the teacher and the pupil and breaking out into new, unknown territory. She thought, though she didn't know if it would be wise to allow herself to hope, that she saw a reflection of her own expression in the other woman's eyes. Her pulse, which always quickened in her presence, was faster than ever. She smiled, in spite of the scars and the pain and the fact that this was more of an ending than a beginning. As ever, Miss Henshaw's perfection was near incomprehensible to her, and here she was, with her arm around her, as far from the classroom as they'd ever been. She bit her li, uncertainly, before she opened her mouth to speak._

"_Miss Henshaw?" The older woman grinned, shaking her head._

"_Miss Henshaw's had her day, I think. It's time you called me 'Hattie'." She wanted her to call her by her first name. Everything that Hattie Henshaw had done for her in the few short months they'd known each other flashed through her head, the way they say your life flashes before your eyes in those last few seconds before death. She'd been there for her when no one else had. She'd cared enough to try to intervene when she caught an inkling of what went on in her life. She'd comforted her. She'd made sure she'd been the one she spoke to on the day when she'd almost killed Minnie Johnson. She'd taken an interest in her. She'd sought her out to tell her what she'd find out tomorrow anyway. She'd (sort of) been her Martha. She'd rescued her in her time of need. And now she wanted her to stop addressing her as a figure of authority, and start treating her as a friend. All that had to count for something, didn't it? Realising that it was now or never, and that she had nothing to lose any longer, she did what she'd wanted to do all along, leaning that tiny bit further in, and kissing her teacher on the mouth. For a few glorious seconds, she kissed her back, answering any questions that might have remained in Joy's mind, before pulling away, sorrowfully. Her voice was thick as she murmured "I'll do anything I can for you, Joy, but you know I can't do that."_

"_Not now…but soon…you won't be my teacher anymore…" Miss Henshaw, no, Hattie, smiled sadly._

"_Not even then. You're too young. We'd still be breaking the law."_

"_But…" Joy spluttered as she tried to come up with a reasonable argument, "You can't be that much older…surely…"_

"_Surely nothing. I'm eight years older. If you were twenty and I were twenty-eight things might be different, but as it is, you're fourteen and I'm twenty-two and it'd be wrong of me. All we can be is friends," her tone softened as she continued, "I wish that wasn't the case. But it is, and I can't change it, no matter how much I might want to."_

_At the time, she couldn't have known. She had no way of telling what would happen next, and how much worse her life was about to get. At the time, it felt like she'd hit rock bottom. It was all as bad as it had ever been, or could ever be, as far as she knew. If it wasn't quite so tragic, it might almost be funny. Just days later, she would long for the pain she'd felt then. It was nothing compared to what she was feeling now. But then, in that moment, she didn't know it. Now, her life was empty. There was nothing in it, no point to it. She didn't know that there was anything worse than that. She didn't know that she'd ever have to go through anything harder than what she'd have to go through now. She didn't know that she was being watched, and that soon, that fact would tear apart the already broken existence that was her life, leaving her to live with the type of something that was so much worse than nothing. She didn't know. Yet._


	8. Kissing Joy Scroggs

**Disclaimer: It's all very upsetting, but I **_**still**_** don't own **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**. This chapter's title is a play on **_**Kissing Jessica Stein**_** and I don't own that either.**

_The classroom door opened, abruptly. Hattie swung around, in apparent alarm. Joy frowned. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Beyond the obvious. Something she hadn't seen yet. Her eyes swept around the deserted classroom. It was cold and it was dark, but that wasn't why she was shaking. Her gaze fell upon the desk that her erstwhile teacher leaned against, looking as though she might topple over without its support. The surface was clear, but for a dusty bottle of cheap wine, a packet of paracetamol and book, slightly battered, that looked eerily familiar._

_It was the next day, nearly twenty-four hours since their outing last night. And everyone knew. She didn't know why, she didn't know how, but it was all over the school that she'd kissed Hattie Henshaw in that seedy pub. It would usually have been dismissed as idle gossip and kicked into the tall grass, but there was something different about this particular case, she could tell, something different in the way the headmistress had looked so pale, the way she had pursed her lips, the way she hadn't quite been able to look at her as she'd asked all those awful questions. Something that reeked of hard evidence. And she could see, in that twisted expression, that she was having to fight herself here. She couldn't bring herself to think ill of Hattie. No one could. She was the type of person that everyone wanted to hate for jealousy but couldn't because they were so entirely lovable. But not even that could save her now. Joy wished that there was something she could say or do to improve the situation she'd dragged her into, but there wasn't. It was too late to do anything now. Their fate had been decided, and all they could do was accept it._

_Joy's eyes flickered back to the wine and the pills and the book. It was The Children's Hour, she realised now. That must be why it'd looked so familiar. Or rather, that was what she tried to tell herself. She was still sure there was something more to this that she simply wasn't seeing._

_What would happen next varied from story to story. There was talk of redundancy, expulsion from unions, court cases. Whatever it turned out to be, Hattie's reputation was ruined. Not only had she taken her underage pupil into a pub and given that pupil alcohol, she'd only gone and kissed that pupil as well. And it wasn't just any pupil, either. It was girl. It was all the more frustrating that this last factor was one that shouldn't matter in the slightest but actually made the case far more grave than it would have been otherwise. Especially when it would already have been bad enough. She'd probably never work in teaching again. And all because one of her young, hormonal charges had touched her lips to hers for the most infinitesimal amount of time. _It's typical, really,_ thought Joy, _this is my life, after all._ She out to have known. After she'd run into her on that day when she'd expecting Mr. Davies, it'd only been a matter of time before trouble would run into her too. She'd been condemned from the moment they'd met._

_Joy walked over to Hattie. Each pair of eyes stayed fixed on the other. The two stood facing each other, frozen in time. Neither of them knew how much time had elapsed when Hattie eventually broke the silence._

_"I'm sorry, Joy."_

_Joy was completely nonplussed by this._

_"What? Why?"_

_"For getting you caught up in all of this."_

_If her tone hadn't been quite so penitent, Joy might have thought she was joking._

_"But I was the one who – I mean, it was my fault. If I hadn't…I'm the one that should be apologising to you!" she protested. How could Hattie possibly be blaming herself for this? Joy was surprised that she hadn't hit her yet. She'd ruined her life, and she was apologising to her. But Hattie was resolute. Shaking her head, she insisted, "No. It's not your fault, Joy. You're one of tons of teenage girls with crushes on their teachers. I'm a grown up and I knew that what I was doing and that I was doing was wrong and I did it anyway. I allowed myself to develop feelings for you." Her voice trembled as she added "More than that, I let myself…" in a near whisper, before breaking off and looking away, as if worried that she'd said too much._

_"What?" Joy blurted, longing to know the next bit. When Hattie didn't reply, she pushed harder: "What did you let yourself do?" But that beautiful, blonde head shook once more._

_"Don't do this, Joy."_

_"I'm not doing anything! I just want –" but Hattie never found out what Joy just wanted, because she chose that moment to interrupt her with a kiss, urgent and frantic, last night's caution having gone with the wind. The time had passed when caution could serve her in any way. Once she had got over her initial shock, Joy kissed her back, equally fervently, feeling her fears melt away as the older woman's arms slid around her waist._

_A while later, they sprang apart as the door opened again. It was a teaching assistant this time, to announce that the headmistress was ready to see Hattie. She didn't seem to have noticed. Not that it would really have mattered anymore. As Hattie made to go with her, the assistant turned to Joy, who'd stayed rigid in her place._

_"I think you'd better go home now, Miss Scroggs." Joy tried to argue, but it was no good. She was being chucked out. As she went to pick up her satchel, she noticed that the catch had been left open. Strange. She could have sworn she'd closed it. For some reason, she felt her eyes returning to the desk, feeling her unease return with reinforcements as she thought of that other thing that she hadn't quite been able to puzzle out. The way they were lined up made them look like the vital implements for whatever plan Hattie had come up with to enable herself to cope with all this, and when your implements were drugs, alcohol and a book about the events leading up to an innocent woman's suicide, you needed to take a long, hard look at your life. She was snapped out of her reverie by the assistant, who, after waiting patiently as the girl picked up her bag and proceeded to stare into space for what felt like a lifetime, finally prompted, "Miss Scroggs?" But Joy wasn't ready. She needed more time to work it all out. She had to have more time. She didn't know what it was that was wrong here, but she did know that it was here, and that if she didn't do something, it would somehow make everything even worse, and she couldn't let that happen._

_"Miss Scroggs?...Joy!" The assistant grew impatient, but Joy didn't care. This was more important. She was already in trouble. A little bit more wouldn't make much of a difference. But then Hattie came to the assistant's aid, softly urging her to "Come on, Joy." That did it. She couldn't hurt Hattie any more than she already had done, even if it was only in this insignificant way. After taking one final, lasting look at the scene before her, she turned, and followed them through the door and along the corridor. As they turned towards the head's office, Hattie pulled her into a tight hug, squeezing all the air out of her in the most pleasing way possible, whispering "Goodbye, Joy."_

_Once she was safely in her room, Joy half-sat, half-collapsed onto on her bed, panic seeming to have taken up residence inside her, still trying to understand what it had been that had been worrying her so much. What it was that was so wrong. She was shaking again, but she wasn't aware of the fact. She couldn't stop thinking about how she shouldn't have left; should never have left. But she hadn't had a choice. Longing to do something about it, she upended her satchel, in search of her own copy of The Children's Hour, sure that it was involved somehow. But she couldn't find it. She checked again, and then again, to no avail. It wasn't there. Her mind flashed back to the classroom, to the moment when she'd realised her bag was open. It must have fallen out. Oh, fucking hell. She flopped back, so she was lying there, as the anxious tears made their inevitable appearance, and grew into outright sobs. Somewhere along the line, she stumbled rather than fell into an uneasy sleep._

_It wasn't until the doorbell rang, waking her up, that she managed to work it out._


	9. What's Best for Joy

**Disclaimer: Sadly, I don't own **_**Hot in Cleveland**_**. This chapter's title is a play on What's Best for Jane and I don't own that either.**

_In that moment, she saw everything. She knew exactly what had happened, and she knew how, and she knew why, and she knew it was all her fault. It was all her fault, because she'd let it happen. She raced towards the front door, wishing as hard as she could that it wasn't true, because a wish wasn't much to go on, but it was all she'd got. Reaching the door, she clawed at the latch, struggling to steady her hands. _Oh God_, she thought, _this is really it now. Oh, please don't let it be true.

"_Rejoyla Scroggs?" The officer's gritted teeth were enough to make her retch. He and his colleague stood on the doorstep, looking as though they'd drawn the short straws at the station and been landed with the job no one wanted to do. She nodded. No, this wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. Except that it could, and it was. How could she have been so blind? _

"_Would you mind coming to the station with us? We're investigating the death of one Harriet Henshaw." She'd known it was coming, but it still took all the air out of her lungs. There was nothing she wanted to do less than answer their questions, but it was hardly as if she had any choice in the matter. Meekly, she followed them, and it was all she could do not to collapse or throw up or both._

_The questions hadn't taken long. They'd probably only taken her in as a formality. They already knew it'd been suicide. It was obvious. Not that she'd been able to realise that in time. Stepping over the threshold, she found that she couldn't go any further. Her legs buckled underneath her, and all those ghosts of memories were back, only now there were new ones to go with those that should have been buried years ago. Memories of Hattie. Hattie standing on the doorstep. Hattie's white knuckles digging into her wrist. Hattie's horrified expression as she'd caught a brief glimpse of all those ghosts that had been left before her. It had been bad enough when she'd been gone. It was even worse now that she wasn't quite back._

_The air was thick with anticipation of the rain that would flood the town. Joy had risked her life by raiding her mother's wardrobe while she'd been at the golf club and "borrowing" a black Chanel dress, which, strictly speaking, hadn't even been necessary, because Hattie had left all her money to her, but it didn't feel right spending it on an outfit for her funeral. In fact, it didn't feel right spending it, period. She still didn't know what she was going to do about that. She sat in a dark corner at the back of the church. She'd been late on purpose, to avoid being watched throughout the whole service. It wasn't cramped, but it was full enough. Hattie had been loved by all who'd known her. Nothing could change that. Lizzie was there, but Lizzie had been avoiding her recently. She couldn't be bothered to care. How could she be upset about losing someone that had never been a real friend anyway? James Harper was there too, a few rows ahead. Subconsciously, she shrank down in her seat. She wasn't in the mood for James today. Or ever, for that matter._

"_Alright if I sit here?"_

_Joy recognised the voice, but she couldn't place it. Wrenching her head around, it took her a moment to realise that it was Karen, the barmaid from that night, wearing a nondescript dress, no make-up and an apologetic expression. She considered telling her to piss off, but as she looked at her, all her anger seemed to give way to weariness, and she shrugged, muttering, "Fine."_

_There was a short silence while Karen sat down and took something out of her bag, before she turned to her again._

"_Here," she waved something under Joy's nose, "She wanted you to have these." Joy flinched, narrowly avoiding being hit in the face, before tentatively taking the proffered book. Looking at it, she realised that it was her copy of The Children's Hour, the one that had gone missing that night. So that was where it had been. She'd had it all along. That must have been why her bag had been open, she realised now. As she flicked through it, she noticed that some of the lines had been highlighted, when she'd only ever written in pencil._

"_I lie in bed night after night praying that it isn't true. But I know about it now. It's there. I don't know how, I don't know why. But I did love you. I do love you." Then, nothing for about a page, and more highlighting on "I feel so damn sick and dirty, I can't stand it anymore!" In the margin, Hattie's elegant cursive proclaimed that "I can only do what's best for you now."_

_Suddenly aware that Karen was watching her intently, Joy looked up, not understanding. But when she tried to meet her gaze, she saw that the other girl wasn't looking at her but at her lap, at some papers that had fallen from the book and into her lap while she'd been too busy marvelling at the script to really notice. Picking the up now, she felt bile rising her throat as she saw her own likeness captured on them, and Hattie's, in that bar that night, looking far more intimate than they ought to have done. It was blurry but unmistakeable. Anyone could see what they were doing._

_Karen really was staring at her now, and as soon as she could bear to tear her eyes away from the images, Joy stared right back at her, unable to decide which of her million questions to ask first. Finally, she settled on "Where did you get these?"_

_Karen hesitated before replying. "She gave them to me."_

"_Why you?"_

_Karen just looked at her. Joy felt that same bile making its presence felt, and fought the urge to gag as she asked "You mean…you and Hattie…?" The barmaid nodded, hastening to add, "I mean, not anymore. It ended a long time ago."_

"_What happened?"_

_She sighed. "There was…an oversight, on my part. We might while she was at university. She came into the pub with some of her coursework one night, saying it was too loud at home and she'd had to get out, and we just started chatting. She told me that she was studying for her English degree, and for some reason, I told her I was working on my first novel. I'd never trusted anyone enough to tell them that before, but there was something about her, something different, that told me it was the right thing to do, and time went by, and we just got closer, and she helped me with my book, and it was perfect, except…I don't know, I just didn't feel ready for that sort of commitment. I loved her, but I loved my freedom too, so, to cut a long story short, one night, when I'd been drinking…well, I made a mistake. I woke feeling like the worst person in the world, and I did everything I could to make it up to her, but I just…couldn't. I'd hurt her too much, and more time passed, and she stopped loving me, but I didn't stop loving her. So when she came into the pub that night…it was the first time I'd seen her in months, and she was there with you…well, you can imagine my anger. I might have wronged her but at least I was old enough to drink…I just wanted to drive you apart. I didn't even think about what might happen. I just wanted her back so much, and if I couldn't have her, I wasn't going to let you have her. You didn't deserve her. That's why I…" her voice had become steadily thicker as she'd gone on with the story, and here, she broke off, as if trying to choke back the tears. Good. Let her _fucking _cry._

"_That's why you went to the school with the CCTV images of us," Joy finished for her, her tone flat. Karen nodded. Joy just kept staring at her, so angry she couldn't move._

"_Great, congratulations, I hope you're proud of yourself," she found herself saying. She was babbling, but it didn't matter._

_Karen shook her head furiously, "No, look, I was just trying to do what was best for everyone, well, mainly me, but her as well, and you, I mean, look at you, you're only about ten…but she loved you. I would have kept the things for myself, but the way she made me promise…I saw how much she loved you. And I loved her too much not to do what she wanted." Joy nodded briefly, before gathering her things and getting up to find a seat elsewhere. The service was about to start, and people were looking, but she didn't care, or she did, but she simply couldn't sit next to Karen. It was hard enough being in the same room as her and not wringing her neck. It was all because of her, because of Karen. Hattie had done it _for_ Joy, but she'd done it _because_ of Karen. She was dead because of Karen. In her anxiety to get away from her, she didn't pay any attention to the seat she was taking, and realised too late that she'd chosen the one next to James Harper, who turned and gave her what was probably intended to be an encouraging smile._

_There was something in that smile triggered something in Joy that might not have existed otherwise. As she grimaced back at him, she thought of James following her around, Lizzie nudging her and giggling every time their paths happened to cross, her father leaving, her mother bemoaning her lack of interest in boys to her friends at the golf club, and then at home, when they were alone…well, best not to think about that. Then there was Karen, going to the school, Hattie taking herself out of the picture, people, people who watched her wherever she went, whispering, pretending they weren't talking about her. They all thought they knew what was best for her, and took it upon themselves to intervene in her life, despite her assurances that she could look after herself, and then, they went and fucked it up even more, just as she'd known they would. This was it now, she decided. She wouldn't fight it any longer. She'd do what they all thought was best for her, and see how they liked that. James had always cared for her, that much was obvious, and she'd always known it, though she hadn't wanted to admit it, and if he loved her, she could love him back, and so she would be. She was strong in her convictions. Of course, she regretted it instantly._

_Months later, she sat in the chilly waiting room, waiting to see what must have been the millionth set of prospective parents. All the ones she'd seen had been nice enough, but she wouldn't be giving her child to them, thank you for asking. The agency despaired of her. They were practically tearing their hair out. They'd been doing everything they could to find someone to raise Joy's baby for what felt like an eternity, and had introduced her to several people that would have been perfect, and, time and time again, she had turned them away, without so much as an apologetic smile. When they threatened to drop her case, when they banged their fists on the desks, when they asked her what was wrong with _this_ one, she would simply shrug and inform them that it "just didn't feel right," and there was nothing to suggest that this meeting would be any different from the rest. They called her in._

"_Well hey there," boomed a Transatlantic accent, as she entered, and she realised that she'd found the missing link she'd been looking for._

"And then I knew that we'd both be moving over here as soon as possible, and he was born, and they took him, and I followed, and I met you," Joy stopped, turning to look back into Victoria's eyes, drawing breath for the first time in what felt like an eternity. She was almost at the point where she couldn't remember what had been happening before she started talking. She'd gotten so caught up in it all again, the way she always did. The actress paused, seeming to take a moment to digest everything that she'd said, before responding. When she did, she spoke in a small voice, nothing like the exaggerated tones that Joy had come to know and love.

"Joy?"

"Yes?"

"You…well, there are things that…you didn't tell me…"

If she hadn't been on the verge of tears, Joy probably would have laughed. Here was Victoria trying to be tactful. She shook her head, trying desperately to push those tears back. She'd told herself she was done crying. She'd already shed enough tears to fill a pond. Victoria waited, watching her, knowing what she was going to do but not knowing if this was the right moment to it. _Screw it_, she thought, _there's only one way to find out_. She leaned over and kissed Joy on the lips. At first, the girl seemed to freeze in shock. Victoria panicked, worrying that she hadn't felt the attraction between them after all, but then, slowly she started to kiss her back, and she relaxed, feeling the euphoria envelop her and not bothering to fight it. She'd known that'd been the right moment.

Later, much later, she asked her again, about the parts she'd left out, and Joy smiled, cupping her face affectionately as she whispered, "That's another story."


	10. Not Falling for Caroline

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_. This chapter's title is a play on _Falling for Caroline_ and I don't own that either.**

As the impossible sun beamed into her face, Joy stumbled into an uncertain state of awareness, feeling her arms in an uncertain position, as though she was trying to grip hold of something that wasn't there. Victoria. That was right, Victoria had been there. She must have left for work already. And...oh, shit. Victoria had kissed her. Victoria had actually fucking kissed her. But...but could she be sure that that had really happened? Had she not just dreamed it (again?) Opening her eyes, she saw the empty mess that was the opposite side of the bed, the duvet having been tossed aside. Of course. Victoria would never bother to attempt such a menial task as making the bed. That's what the help is for, Joy. So it had happened. It had really happened. Joy felt the euphoria begin to spread from her stomach and through her limbs and her chest until she was entirely caught up in it, when another thought struck her. Shit, if Victoria had left already, what time did that make it? Flinging a confused arm out of bed, she reached for the alarm clock on the bedside table. Seeing the time, she leapt up and onto her feet. Half past nine. Fuck, fuck, fuck, she was already late. Maybe it would be alright, though, she thought, as she threw the first clothes she came across in her "closet" (she still longed to call it a wardrobe) in the general direction of her body.

No such luck. Teachers were bastards, she remembered, slipping into a chair with a rueful smile. She ought to have learned that by now. The detention room was musty, as though it could have done with a good rinse and spin in the washing machine. Taking a brief survey of the assorted washouts and disappointments, her eyes rested on the angry-looking girl at the next desk along. She shot her a friendly smile, but the girl just fixed her with a blank stare, as if she could see right through her. Not one to be so easily discouraged, Joy decided to try again once she'd regained her confidence, but as she turned to face the front, she could feel the girl's eyes boring into her. Becoming irritated, she was on the verge of swinging around to glare straight back at her when she felt a sharp tap at her shoulder. Startled, she blurted "What?" The girl flinched away in reaction to this outburst.

"Sorry, you made me jump," she muttered, embarrassed. The girl grinned. It was alright for her, Joy thought, she hadn't just been given the fright of her life. She leaned back in her seat now, as though she were an interviewer and Joy was to be her next victim.

"So what are you in for?" she asked, finally.

Joy considered being furious and ignoring the question for a second or so. Deciding against it, she gave a sheepish grin back.

"I was late to class."

The girl snorted: "Oh, you're hardcore. I'll be careful not to spend to mix in with you."

The urge to tell the girl to fuck herself welled up in Joy, but, with some effort, she pushed it aside. She'd only end up with another detention, so she settled instead for rolling her eyes and turning her back on her. She wasn't giving up, though. Determinedly, she rapped Joy's shoulder a second time, sticking a lazy hand out towards her.

"I'm Caroline."

Joy blanched. She didn't want to take her hand (she wanted to hit her, actually) but she found herself doing it anyway, hearing her voice say "Joy."

In years to come, Joy would look back on that moment wistfully, reflecting on how much it had influenced her life, but for now, she just shrugged it aside, resigning herself to spending the next hour or so in Caroline's less than pleasant company. She was often asked how she could make her mind up about people so quickly; how she could decide to hate someone she'd only just met. She didn't know how, really, she just knew that Caroline was the most offensive person ever to walk the Earth.

As soon as the hour was up, Caroline asked Joy if she wanted to "come watch a movie or something." She opened her that mouth to tell her that no, she didn't want to, because Caroline had the personality of a rash, and she'd rather eat glue than spend another second in her company, but something perverse inside her wasn't having it. Victoria had left a note saying she'd be very late back, after all. It was hardly as if she had anything better to do, and there was something about Caroline that produced mixed emotions in Joy. Ninety-five per cent loathing, five per cent sick fascination. Before she knew it, she was saying that yes, she'd really like that. _No, I wouldn't,_ her head screamed, as soon as the words were out, _what the hell do you think you're doing?_

Caroline's house was a small but comfortable picture of suburban happiness. Caroline led her into a cheerful, sunlit kitchen, where a dark, geeky girl sat bent over an intimidating book. Looking up, the girl smiled at Joy, who was introduced as Caroline's older sister.

"I'm Melanie. Where have you been?" This last was directed at Caroline, who rolled her eyes.

"Jail. And before you say anything..." (she held up a reprehensive finger as Melanie opened her mouth to speak) "...I don't fucking care if you tell Mom and Dad."

Looking slightly scandalised, Melanie seemed to consider this for a moment, before closing her mouth and returning to her studies, and Caroline led Joy from the room, having got them both drinks (she hadn't, Joy noticed, bothered to ask her what she wanted; she'd just gone ahead and got two of whatever she was having.) Over time, the memory of her first encounter with Melanie would begin to fade and blur into all her other memories of her, insignificant as it had seemed at the time. But Joy would never forget the first time she'd met Caroline, or any of their meetings afterwards.


	11. A Shot in the Dark

**Disclaimer: I don't own_ Hot in Cleveland_. I also don't own _A Shot in the Dark_.**

_She sat bolt upright in bed. Oh, no, not this again. She'd had the same dream every night for a week. It was becoming almost routine. Get into bed, scan magazines for mentions of self, fall asleep, have creepy death dream, wake up crying, blah, blah, blah. She wouldn't mind, only it felt so real. Each time, she thought it was really happening, and it scared her to death. In the daytime, she'd be terrified to have to go to sleep and feel that pain again. And here she was, once again, too gripped by fear even to whisper her husband's name. Yet again, she pulled the covers back, only to find his side of the bed empty, and the all too familiar feelings swept over her. Something very wrong was happening, and she had to stop it, and she couldn't. She might as well let it happen. There was no getting out of it now. She prayed silently that it wasn't really happening, feeling sure that there was no point, because this time, it was. She wasn't dreaming any longer. If only she'd paid attention before it'd gotten too late. Oh, god. Here went nothing. Her breath caught in her chest as she got up and tripped over to the mirror, becoming even more unsettled, if that were possible, by the pallid face of her reflection. Damn it, she always forgot not to look. Thunder rolled outside. She shivered. It was the middle of the night, and she could barely make out her surroundings, but she was too frightened to switch on the light. God knew what she might see. The clock ticked incessantly. There wasn't enough time._

_Lightning struck, and the mirror cracked, and her reflection winced as it did, vicious cuts appearing along the lines of the crevices, on her neck, across her chest, on the back of her hand. Fuck, fuck, fuck, let it just be the reflection this time. She didn't want to put her hand in front of her face, but she did it, as a puppet moves in response to the tweaks of the puppeteer's strings. Yes, the blood oozed from the cut, as if it were teasing her. She didn't even know why she was fighting it. She stared at the face that imitated her own, and watched as, slowly but surely, and oh so inevitably, its mouth twisted into a sneer. She really was losing it, and the clock ticked on, and she knew that she was going to die and she gave herself up to it whole-heartedly, forgetting not to pick up the mirror._

_She picked up the silver hand mirror on the dressing table, hoping to find a more accurate likeness. There she was, all cool and calm and dead. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't not shudder. The glass shattered, she retched, she was past caring. The way things were going, she wouldn't have seven years in which to be plagued by bad luck. The signs were clear. She was a dead woman walking. She had to get out of that window._

_Damn it, damn it, damn it. Why was the shutter so stiff? Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Oh, god, the drop, she'd forgotten about that too. But time was of the essence; it'd never been more so. She'd have to get over her fear. She had no choice but to risk it. Time would run out long before she'd made her way down all those stairs. The clock grew louder, its ticks growing ever more intense, until they became nothing more than an extremely painful rushing in her ears. As she stepped onto the ledge, lightning flashed again, illuminating the courtyard below, and, through the blur of the rain, she saw her. Her sister. But her sister was dead; she'd been dead for years. And yet, there she was, leaning against one of the headstones, whiter than her tattered nightdress, with barely enough skin to stretch over her bones, eyes tinged with purple, the noose marks clearly visible on her neck. As she stood there, watching, waiting, she wrenched her lips apart, rasping "You're one of us now."_

_"No. No!" she screamed, and the dead girl laughed, and she went to jump, and a bullet, a bullet that was meant for her, was fired, but she wasn't hurt, she wasn't dying. She was falling._ I have to find out who he is, _she remembered as she fell,_ I have to find out before it's too late. _She was falling in the direction she had intended to jump. She landed face down in the mud, and a body landed on top of her. The body of the person who'd taken her bullet. Trying to ignore the blood pouring from the wound, she dragged herself upright and struggled to turn the body over and into the recovery position. As she did, she saw that it was Joy, and she saw that it was too late. Time was up. The beautiful body was nothing more than that now. Joy lay dead in her arms. All she could do was look to see who it'd been._

_She was almost oblivious as the ghost whispered that immortal sentence ("He'll get you in the end!"), too busy staring at the figure; the masked silhouette of the person that'd caused all this. Every time she had the dream, the figure became slightly more defined, as, if every time, she came closer to discovering his identity, but still, she couldn't make it out. Joy had died for her, and it was all his fault, and her fault, for being too slow, for letting it happen. Because of him, because of her, Joy was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do for her now. He'd taken her, because she'd let her go. Time ticked on, but it didn't matter anymore. Nothing that happened now could matter in any way. She was too late. She was dead. Joy was dead. Again._

As she woke up in tears, Victoria swore that this would be the last time._ So help me,_ she thought,_ I'm getting to the bottom of this._


	12. Tipping the Lino

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_. This chapter's title is a play on _Tipping the Velvet_ and I don't own that either.**

Victoria swept off the set, on the pretext of taking her "lunch" break (which was so called ironically, of course. She hadn't eaten lunch since 1962), secure in the knowledge that she looked exactly is if she wasn't about to do what she was, in fact, about to do. That was one of the perks of being such a talented actress. The part of her that wasn't preoccupied with what she was doing worried that was close to being just a touch too vain. It was a small part. She did what she usually did in these sorts of situations, and brushed it aside, forgetting it almost instantly as she swept into the green room, where she'd left a nondescript paper bag containing something she'd never be seen dead with under normal circumstances. Picking it up on her way past, she made her way to the ladies' restrooms. She had considered the parking lot, but decided against it. Too risky. Anyone that happened to be passing would see what she was up to. At least if anyone found out she'd spent her lunch hour in the bathroom, she could say she'd been doing coke. It wouldn't be the first time.

With the door was safely locked behind her, she folded herself into a sitting position on the uncompromising linoleum, pulling out that book she'd purchased on her way into work this morning. She'd never been been able to summon up more enthusiasm for books, and _Nightmares: An Introduction_ was no exception. It was a dull, uninspiring tome, the title of which glared at her in stiff, threatening block capitals. And if she was known to have been reading a self-help book...why, the very idea! No, watching television and movies was a far more worthwhile way to spend one's time. It made people like her rich and famous, after all. Still. Desperate times and all that. She flipped through the first few pages, pleased to discover that each chapter was named after a potential cause, making the contents almost a comprehensive list. Thank God, she'd just got out of reading three hundred plus pages of this shit. Right, here we were. "Chapter One: Depression". Was she depressed? She felt cheerful enough, considering that all she'd heard from anyone all day was how good Susan Lucci had been in last night's episode of _All My Children_. She'd shown real restraint in not kicking that intern, too. "Chapter Two: Diet". Well, that couldn't be it. It couldn't be anything she'd eaten if she hadn't eaten anything. "Drugs", no, not recently, "Post-traumatic stress", well, that really depended on your definition of a trauma, but it seemed unlikely, "Sexual frustration"._ Sexual frustration_. She scoffed. Please, it was the seventies. How else could she expect to survive in show business? Apart from this gig...no, actually, wait a minute. She'd been far less worried about getting all the lame parts she'd been up for before she'd got the part on _Edge of Tomorrow_, and less willing to do whatever she had to to get them, because she had this to fall back on, and she was a married woman now, wasn't she? If it got out...and anyway, contrary to popular belief, she wasn't a total moral vacuum. A partial one, perhaps, but, somewhere she had some basic values she'd be able to pull out and dust if ever the President decided to pay her visit. She was a married woman, that hadn't seen her husband for several months...and was now living with Joy. With...Joy. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the image of her that filled her thoughts, but it only made it worse. Her mind was full of long limbs, waving hair and deep British accents. Joy. Sexual frustration. Well. She pressed her head back against the door, letting out a long sigh. That was an easy one to solve. She could almost have laughed.

It is difficult to say whether any lingering flicker of doubt from those dusty old values troubled Victoria Chase in that moment, although it can probably be considered unlikely. In any case, she fell back on her old standby to answer any remaining questions: _What the hell?_ If it was a mistake, she'd know soon enough.


	13. Written on the Wind

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_. I am sorry about this chapter's title, which is sort of half a reference to _Written on the Body_ and half to_ Love is All Around_ and I don't own them either, or the film _Written on the Wind_. Also sorry for the reference to_ A Series of Unfortunate Events_, which hadn't been written at the time and I also don't own, but you really should read. Oh, and I was going to say this when I posted my last chapter, but I forgot, so I'll say it now: I started writing this fic before the flashback episode, and, while I know that that episode contradicts a lot of my story, I intend to finish it the way I had always planned.**

Joy swallowed another mouthful of the drink the wasn't hers. Victoria had told her to help herself to any food or drink she wanted from the house, but she'd always been apprehensive about it until now. It had taken today's final strain to push her over the edge, and now she stood on the edge of the balcony that lay beyond Victoria's bedroom, with only the fence to stop the Santa Ana winds from pushing her over the edge of that too. She couldn't do this. She just couldn't do it on her own. Those same winds were wreaking havoc with her surroundings, whipping them up into a frenzy, until her eyes watered and her ears burned, her vision blurred and her head swam. The wind took hold of her now, its gentle breath caressing her neck as it whispered broken promises in her ear. It wanted to take her, she could tell, and she was actually on the verge of giving herself up to it. Why fight the inevitable? It was only going to kill her in the end. The wind blew on and on, and she allowed it to embrace her, its ghostly fingers trailing around her stomach. She closed her eyes to shut it all out, not knowing whether she was about to faint or die and not really caring either way. When she didn't fall, she opened her eyes, realising that someone was holding her upright. They'd been real fingers all along. She instinctively placed her own hands on top of the older woman's, feeling the fears and the pain begin to fade to grey, as does the end of a volatile film into the credits, signalling the end of the discomfort. This, she knew, was her happy ending; standing here in Victoria's arms after having been through a harrowing series of unfortunate events. And she'd never been happy before. Not really. She could only hope that she'd never let go.

It was the actress who broke their mutual silence, her hushed words cutting clear and hard through the hazy purgatory that Joy had almost allowed to consume her, in that foggy reality that wavers between life and death.

"Good evening," she murmured.

"Evening," Joy whispered back, her voice seeming to have gone with the wind, along with everything else. Victoria rested her chin on Joy's shoulder as she surveyed the scene before her. The sun was beginning its slow but steady descent, tinting everything in that augurous shade of orange that signals the passing of day into night, an ending and a beginning, a loss and an opportunity. Life seemed suspended in limbo between them, between this moment and the next, between Victoria holding Joy and whatever was going to happen after that.

"How was your day?"

Joy bit back the mortiferous memories that threatened to spill from her lips, letting out a shaky sigh instead, trying to breathe them out with the carbon dioxide.

"It's just got better."

Victoria smiled inwardly, stepping back and reaching for Joy's hand, turning her around to face her. Another gust of wind whipped through the two of them, almost rattling their bones, threatening to take their souls in its wake if they weren't careful, a reminder of its pervasive presence. But its impact was limited. The elements couldn't defeat them now. They could only destroy each other.

"Do you know what they say about the Santa Anas?" Victoria tilted her head, and Joy became very conscious exactly how close they were to each other. She nodded in response: "Anything can happen." It could be the alcohol, it could be the trauma, it could be a sudden bout of madness, but something came over her as she uttered that sentence, and, impulsively, she closed the tiny gap between them and pecked the actress on the lips, just as she had longed to do since the kiss they'd shared in the bed that night. The two had barely seen each other since then, Victoria having been at work all the time, and now that they were finally together again, she wasn't going to waste a second. Especially not after what had happened today.

Victoria smiled, gently. Joy was so young. She kept forgetting. Tenderly, she pushed a strand of her hair behind her ear, inclining her head to brush her neck with her lips. Dizzy and euphoric, Joy struggled not to gasp. Victoria's hands trailed up her back, and she slid her own arms around the actress's waist. They kissed again, and for longer this time, and deeper. When they eventually came up for air, Victoria didn't hesitate. Grabbed Joy's arm, she headed straight for the screen doors, into her bedroom and onto the bed, where she knelt facing Joy. Joy bit her lip, not quite sure what she was supposed to do next. Victoria grinned, and Joy was relieved to see that her inexperience amused her, rather than putting her off. The actress ran her eyes over the girl, feeling a thrill as she saw her beginning to melt with anticipation. Deciding that she'd teased her enough, she snatched her wrist and pulled her down onto the bed, pausing to ask, "Have you done this before?" When Joy replied in the negative she purred "Good." Then she dragged Joy's top upwards, and kissed her bare stomach. The girl really did gasp this time, and Victoria eagerly helped her to pull the simple vest over her head. Her lips found Joy's again, and she seemed to be gaining confidence, the older woman's convictions rubbing off on her, as she reached for Victoria's shirt buttons, undoing them desperately, not caring if she damaged the blouse in the process. For once Victoria found that she didn't care either. She slid it off and tossed it aside, revelling in the feeling of Joy's nails digging into her back, before tracing her spine. Her fingers twisted themselves in her belt loops, tugging at them longingly. Victoria breathed in sharply, murmuring "Oh, you're a bad girl," against her lips. Taking this for a positive sign, Joy felt for the fastener, slowly unzipping her jeans. The actress was only to happy to assist, kicking them off as she sighed "I hate what you do to me." She bore down on Joy with renewed passion, her burning kisses reverberating through Joy, as she whispered "Tell me if you want me to stop." She didn't. There was nothing she wanted less. Her own shorts were almost ripped from her body, and she couldn't help letting out a loaded "Oh!" Feeling Victoria's mouth against her hip, and then beginning to descend to the edge of her underwear, she moaned, softly. But then Victoria stopped, her hand toying with on Joy's waistband, tormenting her.

"Say my name." she demanded. Her voice was thick, and, if possible, even sexier than usual, and her pupils were heavily dilated, but her gaze was firm; harder than before.

"What?"

"If you want me to keep going,_ say my name_."

"Victoria," Joy breathed, her own voice having dropped several tones, and the evening wore on, and it only got more intense, and it wasn't long before she found herself screaming that name out loud.

* * *

><p>Late that night, Victoria and Joy lay tangled in each other's arms, and the actress slid into an unfettered sleep, confident that she'd shown her subconscious who was boss, and that it would think twice before trying to trick her again.<p> 


	14. Awakening to Darkness

**Disclaimer: I don't own_ Hot in Cleveland_. This chapter's title is a play on_ Awakening to Sunlight_ and I don't own that either.**

_She sat bolt upright in bed. Oh, for fuck's sake._ Wake up,_ she screamed inside her head,_ it's not real!_ But it was no good. The fear had already set in. It really was it this time. This would be the time that killed her. She went through the steps habitually, just as a dancer goes through a routine he must have performed a thousand times. Covers back, bed empty, up and over to the mirror, careful not to fall, and oh, god, her reflection. How could she have forgotten again? Thunder rolling, and shivering, and not being able to see, and being too scared to turn the light on. God knew what she might see. The clock ticked incessantly. There wasn't enough time. Again._

_Lightning struck, and oh, shit, the mirror cracking. Her reflection winced as it did, vicious cuts appearing along the lines of the crevices, on her neck, across her chest, on the back of her hand. But it was okay, it had to just be the mirror last time, the reflection was just distorted because it had broken, and the dark was making her see things, if she looked at her hand it'd be...oh. Why was she trying to fight it? The blood oozed from the cut, and she gave in, yet again. She couldn't change what was about to happen, so she might as well do it with style. Her reflection sneered, and she would have sneered back, too, if her face hadn't been frozen with fear. Next time, though, she told herself, if there was a next time, which there wouldn't be, because she was going to die. She was going to die, and her hand reached for the mirror instinctively, independent from her instruction. Oh yes, charming, the dead image of her; that one that haunted her every time she so much as tripped. What a treat to get to see that again. She shuddered, and the glass shattered, and she retched, and she was past caring. The way things were going, she wouldn't have seven years in which to be plagued by bad luck. The signs were clear. She was a dead woman walking._

_Battling the window, she had half a mind to throw herself through the glass to try and reach the end she was bound to more quickly, but she couldn't do that. That would disrupt the sequence, and that was impossible. It wouldn't work. Doing everything she had always done, and in the same order; that was crucial, or she'd never escape. She'd come too far to start from scratch. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Managing to wrench it open (oh god, the drop) she realised once more that she'd have to jump. Time would run out long before she'd made her way down all those stairs. The clock grew louder, its ticks growing ever more intense, until they became nothing more than an extremely painful rushing in her ears. She closed her eyes, and it was all happening again. She stepped onto the ledge. Her eyes snapped open when lightning flashed again, illuminating the courtyard below, and, through the blur of the rain, she saw her. Her dead sister, with the nightdress and the noose marks, who said what was almost becoming a hackneyed phrase: "You're one of us now."_ So I hear,_ she wanted to snap back, but instead she screamed "No. No!", and the dead girl laughed, and she went to jump, and a bullet, a bullet that was meant for her, was fired, but she wasn't hurt, she wasn't dying. She was falling. Find out who he is; find out before it's too late. She was falling in the direction she had intended to jump. She landed face down in the mud, and a body landed on top of her. The body of the person who'd taken her bullet. Trying to ignore the blood pouring from the wound, she dragged herself upright and struggled to turn the body over and into the recovery position. As she did, she saw that it was Joy, and she saw that it was too late. Time was up. The beautiful body was nothing more than that now. Joy lay dead in her arms. All she could do was look to see who it'd been._

_"He'll get you in the end!" Would he? Would he really? Because he hadn't done a very good job of it so far. She almost strained her eyes with staring at the figure, catching sight of a flash of a strong hand, a hand which sent a wave of uneasy recognition through her, before it disappeared in the folds of the cloak, and it was the closest she'd come to working out his identity, but oh, it was too late, it was too late again. Joy had died for her, and it was all his fault, and her fault, for being too slow, for letting it happen. Because of him, because of her, Joy was dead, and there was nothing anyone could do for her now. He'd taken her, because she'd let her go. Time ticked on, but it didn't matter anymore. Nothing that happened now could matter in any way. She was too late. She was dead. Joy was dead, and she was crying, and it was almost like being in rehearsal for a play that would never be staged, because they could never reach its conclusion in one session, but that they couldn't get out of because the contracts had been signed._

* * *

><p>Joy turned in bed, roused by the sobs of the woman that lay next to her, completely nonplussed.<p>

"Victoria? Victoria!" she shook her arm, gently at first, then with more conviction.

"Joy!" the actress moaned, and Joy shifted to put her arms around her.

"Victoria, what's the matter?"

As she fell into a clumsy state of awareness, the actress hugged Joy back, unable to contain her sobs. Oh, why, God, why wouldn't it stop? What was she supposed to do? She raised her eyes to meet Joy's, hoping to find the answers, but only seeing the girl's own questions. It was then that she realised that, despite everything, Joy was still a mystery to her. She seemed to prefer it that way.

"Joy?"

"Yes?"

"You never finished telling me about...everything..." she trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence. But Joy knew what she meant. She understood every word.

"I know."

"Are you going to?"

Joy closed her eyes, as if hoping that shutting out the question would make the answer go away.

Her voice trembled as she whispered, "I don't think I can."

Victoria nodded, and she smiled, and Joy opened her eyes, and soon enough, they were both laughing at the insanity of it all, and as they laughed, their eyes clouded, closing the shutters over their souls, and each became unreadable to the other again. And Victoria felt eternally grateful that Joy couldn't see what was running through her mind.


	15. Darkness Embraced the Reluctant Daughter

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland._ This chapter's title is a combination of two books' titles (_Darkness Embraced_ and_ The Reluctant Daughter_) and I don't own either of them.**

Victoria had struggled with a turbulent sleep for several hours, her mind whirring as the beginnings of a senseless plan began to take shape inside of it. At one in the morning, she'd had no idea how she was going to pull it off. By the time her alarm went at 6:30, she knew exactly what she was goirng to do. Having switched it off, her hand went straight to the handle of the bedside table's top drawer. From it, she pulled the personalised stationery that her husband had given her for Christmas, complete with matching pen. She ran that pen across the page, having already written and rewritten exactly what she wanted to say fifty times over inside her head. Once she'd got it down, she paused. Signing her name would feel a little too much like writing an autograph for a fan she'd never met before and would probably never meet again, and what Joy was couldn't have been further from that. So she settled for scribbling her initial at the bottom, followed by a solitary kiss. It had to look rushed and spontaneous, as if she'd written it in a hurry as she got ready for work. Once she was done, she swung her legs out of bed and got up, taking care to make it look as though she'd tossed the duvet aside carelessly, and left the note in her place.

On the way to the bathroom, she stopped to pick up her make up bag. Once there, she switched on the light and locked the door, taking an appraisive look in the mirror. Last night's tears had left her eyes puffy and red, and the make up that she hadn't bothered to remove only served to emphasise the bags that had started to make their presence felt under her eyes following her recent sleeplessness. She took out her black eye pencil, along with the foundation that she'd bought without testing it against her skin years ago and never used, because it was too pale, washing her out and making her look like she'd died last Tuesday. She spread the foundation over her face, using the eyeliner to define the dark circles, going over her work lightly with purple eye shadow.

Her hair, ruffled and matted from last night's antics, could have done with a good wash, but instead she wet her fingers, using them to backcomb the ends. Just ever so slightly, so it looked natural. Having sprayed her underarms with deodorant and doused herself in perfume (because she may have wanted to do this right, but the line had to be drawn somewhere), she returned to her bedroom, making for the closet. After a while spent rooting through her vast selection of cocktail dresses, miniskirts and silk stockings, she found the item she was looking for. Here it was, stuffed at the very back. An ancient sleeveless black dress, a size or so too large. Not big enough to make it unconvincing: just so that she looked as though she'd lost a little weight since she'd bought it.

Once dressed, she went to admire her handiwork in one of the other rooms' full-length mirrors. She would have done it in her own room, but that would have necessitated drawing the curtains, and she didn't want to risk waking Joy. Examining herself, she smiled. It was perfect. She looked drained of health, stamina and emotion. Her face had taken on a deathly pallor, highlighted by her dark hair, which fell about it pathetically, as though resigned to the fate of falling to its death but not quite able to let go. The dress hung limply from her, and her never inconspicuous bones now looked determined to burst through it. She only hoped she looked unwell enough to get sent home from the set. It wouldn't do to simply call in sick. That just didn't cut it in the industry. If you could stand, you could act, and if you couldn't stand, you could damned well give it your best shot. If she didn't turn up, it didn't just mean that her work wouldn't get done, it meant that for all the people she had scenes with, not to mention the crew. She was almost ready.

Fifteen minutes later, she stood in the hallway, clad in the same outfit as before, plus one of her husband's thick sweaters and a matching knitted scarf and pair of gloves. All she needed now were huge sunglasses, the mark of a suffering starlet. Having found and put them in place, she was off.

* * *

><p>Joy woke up to the sound of the phone ringing. She wasn't allowed to answer it. Well, she was, but if she took a message for Victoria, the actress would only roll her eyes and remind her yet again that she had people to take her calls when she wasn't there. She would have argued that it could be for her, but the fact that it never was invalidated that point. Victoria's alarm had woken her earlier, but she liked to keep normal, human hours, thank you, so she'd just rolled over and gone back to sleep. She may have trouble getting to sleep, but once she was there, a hurricane couldn't have woken her. She knew it was about time to get up, but she wanted to treasure these last few moments in bed while she still could. There would only ever be one morning after her first night with Victoria, and this was it. She let a few more seconds pass before opening her eyes. Once again, Victoria had buggered off and left her side of the bed in a crumpled state. Only this time, she'd left something behind. Joy picked up the lavender-coloured sheet with "VICTORIA CHASE" stencilled across the top, blinking, her eyes still as yet unused to being open.<p>

"Missing you already," the paper proclaimed. She hadn't signed it, just left a "V" and a kiss, which felt more personal, somehow.

* * *

><p>There'd been a fair bit of shuffling and panicking and hanging around, but in the end, the director had made the executive decision to send Victoria home. She would just, he had informed her, have to work overtime when she was better. That would be fine, she'd replied, weakly, and allowed herself to be bundled back into the limo. It had all worked exactly as she'd intended it to. She'd peeled off the warm clothes when she'd arrived, sweating copiously, and concealed them under her seat. The height of summer had long gone, but it was still far too hot to go around in all that shit. When she'd limped into the studio, sunglasses still perched defiantly on her nose, Marie, the makeup girl, had taken one look at the face behind them and turned slightly green, and it had all gone downhill from there. Honestly, they never paid this much attention to her when she wasn't sick. And she spoke as one who'd tried every trick in the book to get them to.<p>

* * *

><p>Joy met Caroline, as she always did, on her way to school. Despite her initial reservations, the two had become firm friends, and Joy had spent countless evenings at the younger girl's house, preferring it to sitting alone in Victoria's, feeling like an impostor in what the actress assured her was her own home.<p>

She wasn't sure why it was that her relationship with Caroline was so easy. They insulted each other constantly and neither of them minded a bit. Joy could say something awful to Caroline one evening, and the next day, she'd be at the top of her street, waiting for her, as if had never happened. It was odd, really. But she liked it. She liked not having to make an effort all the time, as she did with other people. She liked having the opportunity to relax. It was a novelty she'd never been granted before.

Sometimes, though, she got slightly uneasy. Sometimes, she'd think she caught Caroline looking at her out of the corner of her eye, looking at her in a way she usually wouldn't, and that worried her. She worried about having let on too much; she worried that perhaps Caroline knew her too well; knew her better than she'd like anyone to. But then something would happen, or something would be said, and she'd forget about it. Until the next time.

Victoria was working today, she knew she was, so when Caroline asked her if she was coming over later, she nodded and smiled, and just for a moment, she thought she saw something ominous in the her friend's eye, as if she knew something Joy didn't, but she was gone before she had the chance to get a proper look. Joy put it out of her mind and headed to class, not entirely prepared for what would happen but, as yet, unaware of it.

* * *

><p>She started with the attic, which doubled as a museum for all the things that she didn't want to remember from her life before she'd been married. All those things that she had hoped never to have to come face to face with again. The box she was looking for was in the furthest, darkest corner, her path blockaded by piles of discarded relics of the past. She picked her way over to it. Here she was, doing her own stunts. It was at the bottom of a heap of crap, which she had to disassemble in order to get to it. A grimy mirror, a dusty lamp whose bulb had long burnt out. Where had all this shit even come from? She barely even recognised half of it. When she finally got to the box, she took a moment to catch her breath. Ancient and dilapidated, it was a wonder it had survived all these years. She could feel her strength beginning to melt away, and her first instinct was to run and hide and put that box out of sight and mind forever. Never to be opened again, just sitting in that dusty attic, mildewed and, eventually, descending into disintegration, doomed to be forgotten, because that was the only way it could really be destroyed. It was a box of unwanted memories, and forgetting was the only real way to get rid of it. Otherwise, it would continue to live on in hearts and minds long after its own demise.<p>

She had to do this, though. She had to do it, because if she didn't, she'd never stop having these dreams, and they had to stop; she needed them to stop. She couldn't bear it for much longer. She set about removing the masking tape that had bound those superfluous memories in place for all these years, and she was glad that her name wasn't Pandora, but at the same time, it might as well have been, because this box was every bit as full of evil as hers had been. Right. This was it. With some trepidation, she pulled back the flaps, and bent over to examine its contents. She was ready for the picture that sat at the top; still remembered how she'd stuffed it in here in a hurry, taking care not to look at it or anything else in the box, but she still balked at the sight of it. The woman it depicted was so like her it was uncanny. It was ironic, really. Usually, the sight of her own face would have brightened her mood. There were few things, after all, that Victoria Chase loved as much as herself. But not this time. Bracing herself, she moved it aside, rummaging through the rest of the items. Books, notes, the odd letter and photograph. She had fewer personal effects than your average dearly departed family member, having been so young at the time. Victoria had always kept them (God only knew what would have happened to them if she'd left them in her father's care), but she'd never paid that much attention to them. At first, it had been too painful to go through them properly, and after that, she hadn't wanted to look back. Why pick at old wounds; why dwell on the past? There was only unhappiness there. Far wiser to worry about the here and now. And far easier, as well. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and so here she was.

* * *

><p>Joy wasn't sure exactly how they had got to this point or even how it had started, but all of a sudden, Caroline was kissing her, and she remembered the glimmer she'd seen in her eyes earlier and all those times before, and everything fell into place, and she wanted so badly for things to be simple. How easy it would be to let her, to kiss her back, to date her best friend. They'd drive each other mad, in the most wonderful way. She wanted, God, she wanted it so much, she wanted to be able to let that happen, to be able to be happy with Caroline. But Victoria's face filled her head, and she couldn't do it. She had to choose the person that she couldn't even really choose over the one that was, on paper, completely perfect for her. She hated herself for not feeling the things she wanted to feel. All was certainly not fair in bloody love and war. And she should know. She'd had enough run-ins with both. She pulled away, whispering, "I can't do this."<p>

* * *

><p>After what felt like an age spent sifting through the old things and not finding anything of any significance, Victoria was just about ready to give up. Frustratedly, she picked up the last book, the bottom of the box looming up at her. As she did, she caught somethingmstrange out of the corner of her eye. In her indifferent grip, the book had flapped open, and it had looked like...oh, shit. Oh, shit, shit, shit. The pages had been cut out, crudely, in a move the owner had evidently copied from a film. Inside it was another, smaller book, which she pulled out. The bookmark held a place near the back cover, which she turned to, feeling her pulse quicken. Whether it was from anxiety or anticipation, she couldn't tell. This was it; this was really it.<p>

_"I can't go on like this any longer. I will never be as strong as Victoria, and I can't keep living next to her. I love her, as a sister loves a sister, but I simply cannot stand her. Growing up in her shadow, I feel so trapped. If I go on living, I'll be in that shadow forever, and I couldn't bear that. I need to be my own person. I can't extinguish her light, so I'll have to fade into the shadows. If I don't kill myself, I'll end up killing her. It's the escape route open to me, and I've got to take it. I don't have any choice. I'm so, so sorry. I wish I were stronger, but I'm not. There's nothing I can do about it. Goodbye, dear diary. You've served me well."_

The entry was marked 16th July 1967. Amelia Chase had hanged herself in the early hours of the morning on the seventeenth.

* * *

><p>Caroline was furious. Joy couldn't blame her, really. She'd had to explain (not in any detail, of course. She hadn't wanted to explain at all, but the younger girl was relentless, and she'd been beginning to think she'd never get out of there if she didn't say something) and God, she'd never get to sleep tonight now. Something she'd said would replay itself in her mind, over and over and over like a broken record: "I pity her poor husband." Shuddering at the thought of it, she closed the bathroom door firmly behind her.<p>

* * *

><p>The liquid flowed from the bottle, on and on and on and on, and Victoria watched it go, determined to concentrate on that and not on anything else. When the glass looked as though it might combust from the amount of gin in it, she screwed the lid back onto the bottle and knocked it back, putting the glass to one side and gripping the edges of the kitchen counter. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, and fuck a thousand times over. She had to stop. She wanted to stop. She couldn't take this anymore. But she couldn't stop. She was close, she could feel it. She was so, so close to understanding why she was having the dream, and if she did have it again, if Joy died in front of her one more time...she couldn't do it, she couldn't watch it happen again. Her resolve was breaking, she could feel it, could practically hear it beginning to crack. She'd do Joy's room next.<p>

* * *

><p>Joy let the water run through her fingers, but it was no good. This baptism stuff was bollocks as far as she could tell. She'd been standing here with her hands in the basin for bloody ages, and she still didn't feel any better. The guilt wouldn't do what it was supposed to; refused point blank to just flow away with the ebb of the tide.<p>

"Oh! I'm sorry!"

Shit, she must have forgotten to lock the door. Melanie, Caroline's sister, stood on the threshold, looking embarrassed.

"It's alright." She attempted a smile, turning off the taps. It wasn't working. She'd have to admit defeat sometime. She had hoped to hold on to her last drop of hope for a moment longer, but she'd been caught, and she didn't want Melanie blaming her for a significant rise in her family's water bill.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Joy nodded.

"I had a fight with Caroline, that's all."

"Oh," Melanie nodded, and Joy went to go past her and out of the room, stopping in her tracks when the older girl spoke again.

"I'm sure it'll be okay."

Joy looked over her shoulder.

"What?"

Melanie blushed.

"I mean, I'm sure you guys can patch things up. I know Caroline loves having you as a friend."

Joy smiled, not having to force it this time.

"Thanks, Melanie."

Something changed in that moment, as the two girls stood facing each other. A wall that had existed between them was gradually eroded, an the path was opened for them to cross over into an uncertain friendship. Joy kept smiling, and Melanie smiled back, and Joy turned to go, turned away from the path, leaving the gap wide open. She would be a friend, Melanie's and Caroline's, and she would be there for both of them, but not today, not now. Now, she would go home and sit in solitude for the foreseeable future.

* * *

><p>The room had been unoccupied for several hours. Victoria had instructed the staff to take the day off, to make sure that no one would be around, and Joy hadn't set foot in her bedroom since the previous evening. When the actress opened the door, she saw why.<p>

_It was 1976's take on Los Angeles, and a day like any other. Or so she'd thought. It had certainly seemed that way. Today had been tinted by that same eternal shimmer that had surrounded her since she'd met Victoria. But then, suddenly and without warning, everything had changed._

_It had all started when she'd got in from school. On a typical day, the post would have been cleared by the staff, to be given to Victoria or sent on to her husband, but today was not a typical day. Today, an ominous brown package lay on the mat, untouched by servile hands. A package that was addressed to Miss Rejoyla Scroggs. Oh, God. She'd written home with her new address at Victoria's insistence, but she'd never expected anything to come of it. It wasn't as if there was anyone there that cared where she was or what she was doing. Especially not enough to have spend an extortionate amount on the postage to actually _send_ her anything. With a growing sense of unease, she picked it up, checking the postmark. England. Holy _fucking_ hell._

_A part of her wanted to throw the parcel away, unopened, but what if it was an emergency? What if...what if it was about her son? Gritting her teeth, she made her unsteady way to the stairs. If she was going to fall apart, she'd prefer to do it in the privacy of her own bedroom, thank you for asking. When she got there, she sat on her bed, and, as calmly as she could, tore it open. Bile rose in her throat. She started with a pale envelope, with no name or address written on it. It looked like the least offensive of the items, and she figured the best way to do this would be to ease her way into it gently. Inside was a postcard, entirely blank, but for three words: "Don't forget us." Okay, so, not the least offensive. Moving swiftly on. A sheet of paper, mottled and torn at the edges, covered by a hand she recognised as her own, with a letter "A" on the top in red ink. Fear turned to dread as she realised exactly which piece of paper it was. The last time she'd seen that piece of paper, it had been sitting on the desk in front of Hattie Henshaw after she'd tried to kill Minnie Johnson. She turned it over, not wanting to remember what she'd written, but the words filled her head in a verbatim copy:_

"My mother hates me. The feeling is mutual. Sometimes I think I must love her, somewhere deep inside me, somewhere past all the pain and the resentment. But I don't feel it. All I feel is the dull ache of every day after day after day, and the sharp smart of the scars and the cuts. They say forgiving and forgetting is the way to make relationships work, don't they? I don't think either of us is capable of forgiving or forgetting. Not now. Not after all this time.

There are times when I think perhaps it's my fault; it's me that's getting it all wrong. If I'd been better, wouldn't my father have thought I was worth sticking around for, worth taking with him? He escaped the prison that is the house I live in, which I won't call 'my house', and he left a child to live in it. That, surely, says something about the child. I still remember the day he left, I still remember him standing over her in the entrance hall, the finger marks on her neck, the cut on his lip, the haunting screams. I still remember it every morning as I leave and every evening as I return. When people talk about having a domestic, they don't really mean it, do they? Not in the literal sense. But we do. We mean it every second of every day that passes, forever and ever and ever without an end. This is not the end, because it keeps going. I will stop writing, but she won't stop drinking, she won't stop hitting me, we won't stop hating each other. There's no end to this story."

_Next was a stack of photographs, bound together by elastic bands. The gritty black and white images were unmistakable. The CCTV footage. Oh, bloody hell, this was awful. She flicked through them, pausing when she got to the last one. This wasn't a CCTV shot, but a colour photo that might as well have been black and white for all the greyness it depicted, not dissimilar to the greyness that had just been unleashed, the greyness that had been her old life, the greyness that tried to engulf her now. It was a picture of a grave on a stormy day. The sky was grey, the clouds were grey, the rain was grey, the grave was grey, the church was grey and the very atmosphere was grey. "In loving memory of Harriet "Hattie" Henshaw," she read from the headstone, for what must have been the millionth time, "adored by all who knew her."_

_Last were two books. One was aged and tired, and she didn't even need to check the cover to know what the title was. It was _The Children's Hour_. No need to look at that. She'd read it countless times now. She could probably have recited it, if she'd wanted to, but she'd never want to. Not anymore. The other was a brand new paperback, which had obviously never been opened before, titled _Losing What Isn't Yours_, by Karen Marks. What the hell was this? She understood all the other things perfectly well; all those vindictive reminders of her life across the pond, but what the fuck did this have to do with anything? She'd never even heard of this book before. She frowned, examining it, and froze when she reread the author's name. Oh. Karen Marks. Karen, the barmaid. Karen that had been writing her novel when she'd met Hattie. Karen that had handed in the CCTV footage that Hattie had killed herself over. That Karen. This was Karen's book. Oh, crap. That was one she'd never be reading._

_That was it. There was nothing left. As she looked over it all, her eyes rested on the postcard. She hadn't forgotten it while she'd been looking at the other things, but they had distracted her._ Don't forget us._ Well, there wasn't much chance of that happening. There wouldn't have been anyway, but there especially wouldn't be now; not after all this. The very venom of the words stung her to her very core. And she couldn't even blame the alcohol for this, either. If she'd just sent one thing, it might have been in a bout of drunken anger, but this...this required cold calculation. _Don't forget us._ This was done on purpose to make Joy feel terrible, more terrible than she'd remembered it being possible to feel, which she did, now, so it had worked. Suddenly, she couldn't take it. She couldn't bear to be in here anymore. She ran from the room, ran as fast as she could without stopping. She needed a drink. She needed a drink, and she needed not to be in that room again for a long time; a very long time._

Victoria looked from item to item, with growing concern. This was just...well, there weren't even any words for it. Poor Joy.

"What the hell are you doing?" a voice demanded from the doorway. Victoria's head whipped around as she searched her brain for a way out of this situation. But there wasn't one. She'd been caught red-handed. Joy stood before her, her face ashen.

"Joy! I-"

"Why aren't you at work, Victoria?"

Her voice was icy, the girlish uncertainty that Victoria had come to know and love having disappeared. Fucking fuck, she was so fucking screwed.

"I...well, I...wasn't feeling well," she broke off, awkwardly, her eyes not quite able to meet Joy's cool glare. Oh, shit, this was awful, and could it possibly be more obvious that she was lying? It was a good thing all her acting jobs had been scripted, because clearly, improv was not her forte.

"And you thought you'd take advantage of that to spy on me?" Joy's voice rose. She was beside herself.

"Joy, you, you don't understand, I needed to, I needed to know-"

"There's nothing to understand! Another person that I trusted has let me down. What else is fucking new?"

Victoria didn't like being yelled at at the best of times, but this was too much. This fifteen-year-old kid that she'd taken in was trying to lecture her about what she could and couldn't do? It had been a very, very long day, and she didn't know if it was the herself, or her sister, or even Joy that she was getting angry for now, but she felt Joy's fury infect her, and then she was shouting right back.

"Oh, you're right, Joy, I'm so very sorry for moving around in my own house! I'm sorry for being worried about you!"

"Why would you be bloody worried about me?"

"Are you joking? You say you trusted me, but you didn't trust me enough to tell me about all this. You didn't trust me enough to tell me the whole story!"

Joy knew that she was right, but she didn't let that stop her.

"What, are you saying you've told me everything that's ever happened to you?"

"No, I'm saying that if we're going to have any sort of relationship-"

"But we don't! We don't have a relationship, don't you see that? You're fucking married, and you don't even seem to feel guilty about cheating on your husband!"

After a sharp intake of breath, Victoria crossed her arms, defensively. That had been a low blow.

"I don't remember you complaining," she finally answered, in a much lower voice than before.

Joy just shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. Her anger had subsided, leaving her with hurt. She turned and ran in the direction she had just come.

"Joy? Joy! Where are you going?" Victoria called after her. The answer pricked at her heart.

"To find someone who cares."

* * *

><p>Joy stopped at the payphone at the first payphone on her route, waiting impatiently as it rang and was picked up, with a breezy "Hello?"<p>

"Hello, is that Melanie?"

* * *

><p>Victoria didn't think. She just swallowed two sleeping pills with a swig of gin and went straight to bed.<p> 


	16. The Face Behind the Cloak

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_, although owning it is becoming an ambition of mine. This chapter's title is a play on _Truth Behind the Mask_, and on Fleetwood Mac's_ Behind the Mask_, neither of which I own.**

_She sat bolt upright in bed. Really? Really, with this? Now? She sighed inwardly. She might as well get it over with. Tentatively, she pulled the covers back, only to find her husband's side of the bed empty. Something very wrong was happening, she knew it, and she knew she had to stop it, and she knew she wouldn't be able to. Her breath caught in her chest as she got up and tripped over to the mirror, becoming even more unsettled, if that were possible, by the pallid face of her reflection. Thunder rolled outside. She shivered. It was the middle of the night, and she could barely make out her surroundings, but she was too frightened to switch on the light. God knew what she might see. The clock ticked incessantly. There wasn't enough time._

_Lightning struck, and the mirror cracked, and her reflection winced as it did, vicious cuts appearing along the lines of the crevices, on her neck, across her chest, on the back of her hand. She was horrified to discover that it was not only the reflection that was injured, lifting her own hand in front of her face to see the blood oozing softly from the cut. She stared at the face that imitated her own, and watched as, slowly but surely, its mouth twisted into a sneer. Dear life, she was losing it, and the clock ticked on, and she knew that she was going to die, and she knew that it was inevitable, and she knew that there was nothing she could do about it, no matter how hard she tried._

_She picked up the silver hand mirror on the dressing table, hoping to find a more accurate likeness. What she saw instead was a very cool, very calm, very still reflection of herself. The only problem was that it was also very dead. Shuddering violently, she dropped the mirror, and the glass shattered across the flagged floor as she retched, but she was past caring. The way things were going, she wouldn't have seven years in which to be plagued by bad luck. The signs were clear. She was a dead woman walking._

_She stumbled over to the window, wrestling with the shutter in her attempt to get it open. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. When she finally succeeded, she balked at the thirty foot drop. She'd have to get over her fear. She had no choice but to risk it. Time would run out long before she'd made her way down all those stairs. The clock grew louder, its ticks growing ever more intense, until they became nothing more than an extremely painful rushing in her ears. As she stepped onto the ledge, lightning flashed again, illuminating the courtyard below, and, through the blur of the rain, she saw her. Her sister. But her sister was dead; she'd been dead for years, and she wasn't going to take it, this time. She was dead, and she wasn't there. She was leaning against one of the headstones, whiter than her tattered nightdress, with barely enough skin to stretch over her bones, eyes tinged with purple, the noose marks clearly visible on her neck. As she stood there, watching, waiting, she wrenched her lips apart, rasping "You're one of us now."_

_"No. No!" she screamed, "I'm not, I'm not like you._ _I'm not...dead. Not yet. Maybe my soul was on its way there, but it's not now, not anymore. I know what I want now, and I'll do whatever I can to get it. I'm not like you, I'm...I'm a lot more selfish than you are," she paused, sighing heavily, before speaking again. She wanted to stop, to give it up, for this all just to end, already, but she'd have to keep going if she wanted to get any sort of closure._

_"I'm sorry, Mia. I'm so, so sorry you died, and now I know it was because of me, I...I loved you so much," her throat seemed to have swelled to double its original size, and her voice was growing steadily thicker, "but I can't do anything about that. It happened, I'm so sorry, but it happened. You died. And that's why..." she had to pause, to try to get a grip. Barely succeeding, she continued: "That's why I'm not really seeing you now. Because you're gone." There was conviction in her words, a conviction she only partially felt, because what if she was wrong about all this? She closed her eyes as she finished her sentence, listening to the clock tick, wishing it would all go away. She was...she was just really, really tired. But she had to open her eyes again, so help her, she had to get to the end. When she did open them, she couldn't quite believe it, had to take a moment to make sure she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing. But she was, it was really true. She had gone, and forever this time. She'd finally let go, and it was time, oh, crap, it was time, if anything, the time had passed, and why hadn't it happened yet? She went to jump, and the shot rang out, and she was falling. Falling in the direction she had intended to jump. She landed face down in the mud once more, but something was different this, something was...missing. Oh, good God, it was Joy. Joy wasn't there. It was then that she became aware of a sizeable dent in her hip, and excruciating pain. Joy wasn't there, so the bullet had hit her. That meant...that meant this time it really was it. This time, she really was dying, and it didn't matter that the ghost wasn't there to tell her he'd get her, because it was done, it had happened, she'd been...got. _She'd been shot._ Gasping for breath, she put all her remaining strength into pulling her head up, fighting to focus her eyes enough to try to get a look at the figure on the window ledge. She had to know who it was, she had to work it out if was the last thing she did, which was actually looking incredibly likely. When she finally managed it, she saw that the wind had blown his hood back, revealing a face that she knew only too well, which stared out, unseeing, expressionless, more of a statue than a man, and then she fell to the floor, the blood draining from her wound more quickly than her heart could pump it out._

_That taken her final reserve of effort, and the shock, it had, it was destroying her. She wanted to give up, she was going to give up, there was nothing to live for anymore. Her breaths were as ragged as her nightdress. She was dying. It was only a matter of time now. Everything was blurring, as if the world were gradually becoming one of Monet's paintings, more and more and more, until all she could make out were spots of colour before her eyes. Joy wasn't willing to give up everything for her anymore, wasn't going to put her above everything else, because she hadn't done the same for her. She was blacking out, and the light, the one you were supposed to move towards, grew dimmer and dimmer, and she let it, she didn't want it. She had no reason to. Her whole body ached, the most intense ache she'd ever experienced, and she was falling once more, much harder and further this time, into the perpetual blackness that had swept over her world, and she could hear her name being called, but before she could respond, it was too late, she was dead. Victoria was dead, because Joy hadn't been there to save her._

* * *

><p>"Victoria? Honey, are you okay? Victoria?"<p>

Reluctantly, Victoria allowed herself to be dragged into the waking world, far more tired than had been prior to falling asleep, and stared straight into the eyes of the man who had just shot her.


	17. I Don't Love You

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_. This chapter's title is a play on _Do I Love You?_ and I don't own that either, or the poem _Not Waving but Drowning_, which is referred to.**

"Laurence!" she breathed, too stunned to say anything for a moment, but that moment was soon dead and gone. Oh, God. She sat up in bed, sighing. She'd told that spectre of her sister that she wasn't like her; wasn't so willing just to die, to leave the world to make room for other people. She was more selfish than that. But now she realised that suicide was really the ultimate act of selfishness, wasn't it? A lot of verbose nonsense was talked about what essentially amounted to taking the easy way out and leaving all your crap for other people to clean up. If she wasn't going to leave the world she'd have to actually live in it; would have to clean it up herself, and there was more than one reason why she employed people to keep her house clean. It was so, so tempting to do the same with her life, leaving the debris in someone else's able hands. But she couldn't, she just couldn't do that. She had to follow this through to its conclusion, had to know for sure if her life was to be worth living; if the people around her could be worth staying alive for.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she snapped, too wearied and exasperated to say anything other than exactly what came to mind. It was so typical of Laurence to show up now, at the least convenient time possible, without so much as a word in warning. Why couldn't he realise when he wasn't wanted? She knew she was being unkind, but she felt too sorry for herself to care about that at the moment. She'd just decided not to kill herself for other people, decided to put herself through all this shit for their sake, that would have to be enough for them, for today at least. She couldn't fucking cope with having to be nice to them as well, not right now. Now, she had the right to be a little bit selfish.

The man was blinking, seeming a little taken aback.

"Well, that wasn't a very warm welcome," he quipped, recovering, moving to brush her hair from her face, affectionately, but she flinched away in irritation.

"Oh, forgive me, Larry. You're quite right, I am a little rusty. Probably because it's been _such a long time since I've seen you_. Do remind me of the correct manner in which to greet one's estranged husband." She made sure to squeeze her words tightly, so that sarcasm oozed from them like blood had done from the wound after he'd shot her. She wanted to hurt him. She was hurting; had been hurting so much, and it was damned well time someone else took a turn at it. Let him get a taste of the pain he'd left behind; see how well he coped. _She hoped he'd fucking cry._ She got up and went to the drinks cabinet, cutting him off as he responded.

"I'm hardly estranged-"

"Oh, yes, you are. We haven't seen each other in...in...well, I've lost count of how long it's been, that's how fucking long it's been!" She fought to keep her voice even, wanted to keep her cards close to her chest; couldn't let him know that she was bluffing, that she knew she had the losing hand, but she couldn't stop it rising at the end of this sentence, growing steadily more high pitched. She concentrated on the tasteful tumbler before her, the amber liquid she poured into it tarnishing its righteous transparence, the way he had done with her life._ Nothing made sense anymore._ She knocked back the whisky, which had sat, untouched, in the cabinet, for all those months, very much his drink and not hers, and it burned its way through her, the physical, visceral pain running parallel to the emotional pain; a divine discord. After a beat, she pulled herself together as best she could and turned to face him, her voice steady once more.

"Come on, Larry, you know our situation is...I mean, it's hardly ideal, is it? Good Lord, we're practically separated."

"No, we're not!"

"Aren't we?"

"No! I mean, we're apart a lot of the time because of my work; separated people, they, they're apart because of unhappy marriages! We, we're not, we don't have marital problems!"

Victoria snorted.

"Well, you might not, but I've got problems coming out of my ears. I didn't even know you were coming back, Larry. Shouldn't that maybe_ tell_ you something about our marriage?"

"I finished up early and I wanted to surprise you! Christ, is that so wrong?"

Victoria just rolled her eyes, feeling her anger evanesce into regret. She was just so, so tired. Seeing this, he crossed to her, taking her hand in his.

"Come on, Vic. I know you're mad at me because you missed me; that's why you're being like this, isn't it? I'm sorry, I really am." He slid his free arm around her waist, whispering, "I've really, really missed you," in her ear. When he kissed her, she closed her eyes, wanting just to kiss him back, to let him overpower her, to relinquish control to someone else for once; give herself a break. She pushed him away after about four seconds. She couldn't do it. All she felt was revulsion, and she couldn't possibly let anyone else manage her life. They'd only fuck it up even worse than she had done, and she was having a hard enough time dealing with the consequences of her own mistakes.

"I didn't miss you," she glared at him, "I forgot about you a lot of the time, actually, which isn't surprising, considering that I barely even see you when you're in the country. You're more in love with your career than you are with me, and more into the idea of having a TV star wife and showing off to the neighbours than in marriage itself. We don't have a _relationship_," she hissed, seething, as she echoed the words Joy had thrown at her, "we have a fucking _arrangement_. And_ I want out of it_."

He was angry too, now, the stereotypical man rejected, stung by her harsh words and the very venom with which she spat them at him, his wounded pride manifesting itself in ugly irascibility.

"Yeah? Well, you know what Victoria? You're hardly the perfect wife yourself!"

"I know." And she did, all too well. She knew she wasn't perfect, that everything she was saying was entirely hypocritical. She loved herself too much and others too little, loved herself far more than she'd ever even cared for him, and she'd probably never stop screwing other people over to get what she wanted. She knew that. But it was beside the point. She'd deal with it later. One problem at a time was as much as she could cope with. She opened her mouth to continue, but he wasn't done.

"You're selfish, and self-centred and you only think of yourself. You don't care what happens to anyone else as long as you're alright, and maybe I travel too much, maybe I could have made more of an effort, but you know, you could have called me too! All you had to do was pick up the goddamn phone. But no, I always have to be the one to get in touch with you, I'm always the one that has to do everything, and you take my doing it for granted, but if I don't do it you get made at me, and now you think we have problems, and you're trying to turn it all on me? Are you fucking kidding me right now?"

Victoria inhaled heavily, feeling his tirade sliding off her like a bullet off a superhero. _She would not_ _retaliate_. It just wasn't worth it. She was exhausted.

"I can't do this anymore," she told him, having resolved just to say what she had to say and get the hell out of there as quickly as she could, "My sister, you remember what happened to her? It was because of me. _My own sister died because of me_. She died because she couldn't stand living next to me, feeling trapped in my shadow. I found that out yesterday," oh God, not the tears, please not the tears, not now. _Just a few more moments_, she begged them, _please just let me finish_.

"That's how I feel now. I can't do this, it's, you're squeezing the life out of me. If I don't get out of this marriage, you'll kill me, perhaps not intentionally, but by default, when my energy's spent, and I'll either waste away or kill myself, or I'll kill you, if not by not loving you then by being driven to it, because it'll end up being the only way to escape. That's why I have to do this now, before it's too late."

She took yet another deep breath, unprepared for what the next sentence might cause, but unable to keep it inside her any longer.

"I want a divorce, Larry."

He sank against the bed, the colour draining from his face.

"You want what?" He tossed her a final lifebuoy, one last chance to try to bind herself to him, to make their marriage work. She shook her head, slowly. No. She wouldn't take it; would rather die in the water than live on his ship. _She was not waving but drowning_.

"I want a divorce," she repeated, resolutely.

But he was still trying to fight it;_ he didn't get it_. He just didn't understand that it was too late now, that there was no way things would ever be right between them. They never had been, because they never could be. Of course, she had the unfair advantage of a better understanding of the situation. He had no way of knowing how hard and how fast she'd fallen for somebody else, although it was so totally evident to her that she felt as if it were written on her forehead in fluorescent ink and he'd just neglected to notice.

"On what grounds?" he asked, faintly. She half-smiled at the irony. He didn't see it, and yet, to her it was so obvious that she could hardly believe she was having to spell it out.

"Irreconcilable differences."


	18. Car Pool

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_. I also don't own _Car Pool_.**

"Joy!"

"Shit!" The girl stumbled forward, narrowly escaping falling flat on her face. Having regained her composure, she fixed the woman that had sprung from under the car seat with a steely glare.

"Victoria, what the fuck? Hans said there was an emergency!" When the actress's driver had rung the Morettis' doorbell, ashen-faced, she had assumed the worst. Surely someone as proud as Victoria wouldn't be the bigger person after that big an argument unless she was in dire peril. But no, here she was, on top, limo-leaping form, and it was all Joy could do not to curl up in a ball and cry herself to death. It had been approximately twenty-six hours since she'd walked out of Victoria's house and sworn never to look back, but she couldn't help it. She felt like shit. It was better to have loved and lost, they always said, but they were lying, weren't they? It was far better to carry on unaware than it was to suffer the vicious, devastating pain of loving and losing, just when you'd thought that, after year after year of endless shit, your life was finally starting to look up. Ignorance really was bliss, something she'd learned the hard way, several years ago, in another life. And though everything else had changed, that fact remained immovable.

"There_ is_ an emergency!" Victoria insisted.

"Oh, really? What is it, then?"

The older woman looked sheepish.

"I really needed to talk to you."

Joy sighed.

"Look, Victoria, I don't have time for this."

"Please, just talk to me. It's _important_."

"Yeah, well, that's what you said about your struggle to find the perfect pair of flares."

"Look, Joy, I know you're mad at me, and you have every right to be. What I did, it...it was very wrong of me, and I'm sorry. For what it's worth, I only did it because I was desperate, and I was so scared that you were going to find out, because I didn't..." Victoria drew a shaky breath, and her voice was a lot thicker as she continued, "I didn't want to ruin the...the best thing that ever happened to me."

Joy's expression softened.

"Do you mean that?"

Victoria smiled, gently. It was the most genuine gesture she'd ever known her to give.

"Of course I do."

"But..." Joy faltered, "but..you've got a husband..."

The actress shook her head.

"Not anymore."

"Really?"

"Really."

That was it. That was the moment when Joy descended into sobs, no longer caring about the consequences. She felt Victoria close her arms around her, not even worrying about getting her shirt wet, and that, as they say, was that. For now.


	19. Losing Chase

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_. I also don't own ****_Losing Chase_.**

The air was cold that night. It was a one of those bleak, mid-November days, and summer's breezes had started to give way to winter's bitter winds, signalling that times were changing. It had all been relatively simple, at first. More so than Joy could ever have expected it to be. She and Victoria had slotted into each other's lives as smoothly as a hand into a custom-made glove. The situation was absurd, of course. She ought to have known it was too good to be true, to last, but it just felt so right at the time, and she so wanted it to be, that she allowed herself to get caught up in it. She had been miserable for too many years not to leap at her first and only chance at happiness. She saw it in years to come, though, when her common sense had finally started to catch up with her, as she sat sipping Scotch, and smiled at the memory of the girl she had been, wondering if it was too late for that girl ever to come back, hoping she hadn't lost her forever. It could never have worked. If it hadn't ended the way it had, something else would have come along and torn them apart, as easily as she'd torn those damned bank notes. They'd never stopped haunting her, not really. It wasn't that they didn't love each other, only that their feelings were premature. They just weren't ready for it yet, and they were playing on borrowed time.

Victoria's father showed up unannounced and uninvited as the actress arrived home from the set. Joy was kissing her hello when a brash, self-important voice burst into their world, demanding to be made acquaint with the young lady, which Joy assumed meant her. Victoria didn't acquaint them. What she did do was spin around abruptly and let out a long suffering "Oh, God," as that old, familiar feeling of tightness in her chest began to set in. Ignoring her, the guest extended a hand to Joy, and introduced himself. Funny how he managed to make even that sound insincere. Maybe it was what came of being an actor, in the end. The inability to stop. Having already decided that she disliked this man immensely, the girl took the hand, muttering "Charmed, I'm sure," which came out sounding a lot less charmed than she'd originally intended it to. Seconds passed as they stood there, the uneasy silence settling around them like the evening mist. Unsurprisingly, Victoria was the one to break it.

"What are you doing here?" It came out sounding more hopeless than it did angry. She was done being mad at him; couldn't be bothered with it anymore. She'd been so angry with him before that it had numbed into nothingness, the way a word lost all meaning if one said it enough times consecutively. It was no good. She couldn't fight him. Her defeat was inevitable, and all she could do now was wait for a slow, agonizing death; the same death she'd narrowly escaped growing up in his house. But she'd never forgiven him. Never would, either.

"Can't a father drop in to see his only daughter?"

Shortness of breath, black spots appearing before her eyes.

"Not when she isn't his only daughter."

The man waved a hand, dismissively.

"Only living daughter, then. Same difference."

Dizziness, an unmistakeable buzzing in her ears. It would be a miracle of she managed to remain standing for the rest of this visit. As it was, it was all she could do to choke out, "Well, if this is the sort of repartee we can expect for the rest of the evening, I for one am going to need a drink!"

When Victoria returned with the drinks, the other two had adjourned to the living room, where Alex had backed Joy into a corner, his hand on her cheek. He was getting worryingly close to her when the door swung open. And in that moment, several things happened at once. Victoria sunk backwards, the tray of drinks clattered to the floor, and Joy managed to escape by kneeing her captor in the balls while he wasn't looking. Crude, but effective. She ran straight to the door.

"Victoria!"

The older woman's face was ashen. It had finally happened, just as she'd always known it would. He had killed her. Cause of death: asphyxiation. Joy didn't quite know how, but she seemed to have aged several years in those few seconds.

"Go upstairs, Joy."

"But-"

"Upstairs!" Victoria yelled, so loudly and with such vehemence that it almost knocked Joy off her feet. Reluctantly, she complied, wishing she could stay and see what would happen next.

Victoria pulled herself upright and waited to hear Joy's bedroom door close before she closed that of the living room. Then, when they came, the words tumbled out of her, painful but unstoppable, in a manner reminiscent of that of vomit.

"I cannot believe you. She's young enough to be your daughter. She's eleven years younger than your actual daughter, for Christ's sake!"

"Oh, come now, Victoria, let's not point the finger here. I was doing anything despicable, or anything I didn't think you were doing already. In fact, knowing you, I dare say you've been doing a damned sight more than I was!"

The truth in his words hit her like a slap in the face, and that was when it happened. This was the point at which everything changed. She hadn't treated Joy any differently than he had done; in fact, what she had done was probably even worse. Not only was she sleeping with a minor she'd asked that same minor to move in with her started an affair with her while she'd still been married. And that was when she knew it all had to end, because she couldn't carry on this way. She would not be her father. The incarnation of her that was an incarnation of him was the Victoria Chase that had left tonight, never to return again. That part of her was the part that had died, and as a result, she had changed forever. Now, because of that, her entire life needed readjustment.

"Tell me," he continued, "how is life on the Lily Tomlin side of things?"

"Oh, it's fabulous, thank you for asking. How is it in the Dark Ages with your attitudes?"

"Oh, not this again. I just think that if you gave a man half a chance-"

"What more do you want from me? I married a man, didn't I?"

"Oh, yes, and you made such a good go of it, too. Were you planning on ever telling me about the divorce, or were you just going to let me find out from the tabloids?"

"You saw Larry," she realised. Of course. She should have known.

"So that's why you're here."

"I worry about you, Victoria. I don't want you to run away from your marriage at the first hint of trouble."

"Bullshit! You just don't want me to fuck other women!"

"Victoria, I love you. I just don't want you living a life that will be ultimately unfulfilling."

The woman shook her head, so sick of this age-old war that she was ready to cut her own throat just so it would end. She didn't know why he was keeping it up, anyway. He knew as well as she did that he'd already won; that the result could never have been any different. She'd been fighting a losing battle all along, and what good had the knowledge that she was right done her when it came with that that she couldn't possibly triumph in the end? Fuck all, was the answer, and always would be. It had to end sometime, and it had gone on long enough. She was done.

"Just go." _And don't bother coming back_, she added, silently.

Victoria made two resolutions that night. The first was to be a better, less selfish person, and the second, never to let her father anywhere near herself or her loved ones ever again.

* * *

><p>"I've called the Morettis," Victoria told Joy later that evening, "You can stay with them for as long as you need. Hans is waiting to take you over there whenever you're ready."<p>

"What?"

"You can't live here anymore," the actress avoided her eye, "I'm sorry."

Joy couldn't believe her ears.

"What are you talking about?"

"Here." Victoria extended her hand, in which she held a small, brown envelope, willing the girl to just take it and get the hell out.

"What's this? Oh, please. God, tell me it's not money." Joy looked appalled. Victoria gave a curt nod, still not quite able to look her in the eye. The girl's voice grew icy.

"Is this a joke? Because I don't think it's very funny."

"Just take it."

"Victoria, you can't just _buy me off_!" She spat the words at her, as if the taste of them was so awful that the simply couldn't bear for them to be in her mouth any longer.

Victoria sighed.

"I don't have the energy for this, Joy. Please just fucking take it and go."

Joy shook her head, the same way Victoria had done to her father just minutes ago.

"Go to hell, Victoria. And while you're there, you can take your stupid money and stick it right up your skinny, disloyal, mercurial arse!"

* * *

><p>She'd really gone. She'd left her world as abruptly as she'd tottered into it in those dreadful shoes, as if she'd never been there at all. Only it wasn't actually like that at all, because now, she couldn't move for the pain of it all. Her heart and mind were breaking, and she only had herself to blame. Once again, Victoria Chase had ignored all common sense and good advice and ended up making yet another fatal mistake. She was starting to wonder if she'd ever get it right.<p>

Yes, the air was cold that night. And no matter how many fire she lit or sweaters she put on, she just couldn't seem stop shivering.


	20. The Price of Scotch

**Disclaimer: I don't own _Hot in Cleveland_ or _The Price of Salt_. And I'm sorry for using "Scotch" in multiple titles.**

It was hard to tell when an acquantainceship became a relationship; crossed the line between a vague, non-committal dalliance, and something more meaningful. Hard to tell when it started to require something from you. When an affectionate glance became a loaded gaze; a brief clinch, an ardent embrace. A glass, a bottle; a drop, a river. It was inevitable, really, that's what anyone would have said, and did too, all over the newspapers and straight to her face. She was famous, her family it was famous; she lived in Hollywood, for God's sake. The stereotypical Hollywood daughter, complete with the messy divorce case hanging over her and the crumbling ground straining beneath her. It was so unsurprising, it hardly even qualified as news. She was still ripped to shreds, of course, but that went without saying. That was inevitable, too.

Wine, vodka, gin, and beer. It was all much the same once one was past a certain point. Whiskey and cider, it made no difference, when one had drunk enough of it. When it had stopped being a choice. No more the occasional indulgence, now the sustenance that carried one from this day to the next. When it started to make one feel worse, rather than better. Night after night, bar after bar, bottle after bottle. Lover after lover. When every morning was spent retching, and enough weight had been gained to send one up a dress size. When nature had seemed to lose touch entirely, and the craving reigned supreme. There was only one thing for it, of course. Inevitable. It was all inevitable.


End file.
